ZGW Kolloquium am 5. April 2017

Controversies and Consequences: The Marginalization of the Social Sciences at the U.S. National Science Foundation, 1960s to 1980s

In this paper I propose that following the rise to prominence of the social sciences in national policymaking during the 1960s, the National Science Foundation had an important opportunity not only to expand its support for them but also to broaden their influence in the wider society. However, the agency's social science efforts soon encountered mounting criticisms, especially from the political and cultural right. The decade of the 1970s turned out to be a transitional period for the social sciences, accompanied by significant loss of ground at the NSF in ways that reflected the lasting legacy of Cold War science policy developments two decades earlier, during the agency's formative years. These developments also set the stage for the crisis in American social science during the early years of the Reagan administration.