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War-Time Priorities in Research: A Statement by the Research Committee of the American Political Science Association1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Ernest S. Griffith ,
Phillips Bradley ,
Robert Leigh ,
Karl Loewenstein ,
Joseph McLean ,
Walter R. Sharp ,
Carl B. Swisher  and
Francis G. Wilson
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Extract

In the report of the Association's Committee on War-time Services occurs the following passage: “It seems to the Committee that the customary individualism of the profession is a luxury that cannot be unimpaired in war-time; political scientists must not go through the war with a business-as-usual attitude toward research and critical writing. The crises upon the nation and awaiting the nation demand that the profession recognize priorities in its scholarly work…. Students, mature and immature, should know what men of affairs consider to be the more crucial issues … The Committee … does ask … that the profession be given leadership in determining what to do ….”

The Research Committee of the Association considered this challenge and sought an answer from those members of the profession who had temporarily left their academic halls and plunged into the war effort in Washington. This group gave generously of their time and thought to the matter. The Committee's own function became merely that of a reporter or synthesizer of the views thus expressed. It is this synthesis which this statement incorporates. The suggestions are deliberately not attributed to any one individual. In the first place, many suggestions were made by more than one person; in the second place, the total pattern is even more intriguing than the individual suggestions.

Type
Instruction and Research
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , June 1943 , pp. 505 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1943

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References

2 See this Review, Vol. 36, pp. 931–945 (Oct., 1942).

3 Those consulted were: Ethan P. Allen, Alex B. Daspit, Earle DeLong, Marshall Dimock, William Y. Elliott, Merle Fainsod, James W. Fesler, Patterson French, George B. Galloway, Harold Gosnell, E. Pendleton Herring, Arthur N. Holcombe, Harold Lasswell, Karl Loewenstein, Joseph McLean, Harvey Mansfield, Charles E. Martin, Peter Odegard, Harvey Pinney, William Ronan, Wallace Sayre, Walter R. Sharp, George A. Shipman, Carl B. Swisher, Benjamin Wallace, Kenneth Warner, and Francis O. Wilcox.

4 One only among those consulted dissented. He expressed the opinion that scholars were and should be completely individualist, and that such an effort as that of the Committee was misplaced.

5 The Committee wishes itself to go on record as favoring also the long-range view of values in research, even though there must necessarily be priority at the present time for those projects which contribute to the winning of the war and the postwar settlement.

6 In this connection it should be borne in mind that the Research Committee of the Association is sponsoring a panel on the general subject of “The Rôle of the United States in the Postwar World,” and political scientists may look for further leadership from this panel in the course of a year or so.

7 See the fuller discussion of this suggestion in the report of the Association's Committee on War-time Services, cited above.

8 See the various reports of the Association's Committee on Congress, e.g., in this Review, Vol. 36, pp. 1091–1102 (Dec, 1942).

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