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Another science-related foreign policy initiative of the Kennedy administration in India survived, however. The United States accepted the Indian invitation to “adopt” one of five new Indian Institutes of Technology, and the U.S. adopted IIT/Kanpur. Under contract with USAID, the United States assembled a consortium of American universities led by MIT to send scientific experts to IIT/Kanpur, which would develop into one of the premier institutes of higher education in India. The American effort in India was part of a broader program focused on developing countries as a means of countering Soviet influence in the Third World.

Congressional initiatives

Both houses of Congress took steps in reaction to Sputnik to improve their oversight of executive-branch science policy, particularly with respect to space. In July 1958, the Senate established a Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, and the House of Representatives established a Committee on Science and Astronautics. (In 1973, the latter committee would be renamed the Committee on Science and Technology.) Possibly because of its broader substantive scope, the House committee proved to be the more effective over the years in helping to shape national science policy. U.S. House of Representatives, Towards the Endless Frontier: History of the Committee on Science and Technology, 1959-79 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980).

The post-Sputnik surge of public interest and concern about science led to another abortive attempt to establish a unitary, institutional federal base for the development and implementation of American policy. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN) introduced legislation to establish a cabinet-level Department of Science and Technology that would have included the NSF, AEC, NASA, and the National Bureau of Standards. Humphrey’s legislation failed in large measure because of opposition by the scientific establishment.

Following the creation of the Office of Science and Technology, Congress gained a measure of access to the presidential science advisory system. Although relations between the science advisor, OST, and the corresponding congressional oversight committees remained cordial throughout the remainder of the Kennedy administration, Congress—particularly the House of Representatives—continued to assert its own independent perspective. A series of hearings beginning in October 1963, organized by the Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Development of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics under the chairmanship of Emilio Q. Daddario (D-CT), sought to “identify problems in the Government-science relationship and to assign priorities for dealing with them.” U.S. Congress, House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Development, Towards a Science Policy for the United States . Committee Report, 91 st Congress, 2 nd Session, October 1970. Their principal lasting result was to establish the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, and particularly its Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Development, as an effective participant in the development of U.S science policy. In 1965, the subcommittee began a series of hearings focused on the NSF, which led to the first substantive amendments in 1968 to the NSF Act of 1950. The most significant outcomes of these hearings explicitly included the social sciences among disciplines qualifying for NSF support, and gave the NSF authority to support applied as well as basic research.

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Source:  OpenStax, A history of federal science policy from the new deal to the present. OpenStax CNX. Jun 26, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11210/1.2
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