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Science
Advisors to Presidents and Prime Ministers
A
Brief History of the Carnegie Group's First Three Years, 1990-1992
BY
D.
Allan Bromley
APRIL
1996
In 1988, Carnegie Corporation of New York, led by its president,
David A. Hamburg, M.D., established the Carnegie Commission on Science
Technology and Government. The Commission's mandate was to recommend
ways in which all levels of government could be organized to improve
decision making through better use of scientific and technical information.
The co-chairs of the Commission were Joshua Lederberg, president
of Rockefeller University, and William T. Golden, chairman of the
board of the American Museum of Natural History and a businessman
with a long and influential career in national science policy. Of
the twenty-two members of the Commission, half were scientists and
engineers with governmental experience, and half were nonscientists
with particular knowledge and experience in public affairs and science
policy.
At its initial meeting in April 1988, the Commission chose as its
first priority for analysis and study the role of science and technology
as it affected the U.S. President. The members felt that the new
administration coming into office in January 1989 could enhance
the role of the President's science advisor and the committee of
outside advisors so that science and technology could serve the
President more effectively. At its next meeting, in October 1988,
the Commission approved the issuing of its first report, Science
& Technology and the President. This report, like some
others issued at the time, recommended a more important title for
the science advisor (Assistant rather than Special Assistant to
the President) and the re-establishment of a Council of Advisors
reporting directly to the President (rather than to the Assistant).
The Commission members were pleased when President Bush chose D.
Allan Bromley, the distinguished Yale University physicist, as his
science advisor and upgraded the title. The Commission co-chairs
and Dr. Hamburg met with Dr. Bromley in August 1989 and discussed
some of the suggestions in the Commission report. Dr. Bromley, with
his extraordinary talent and energy, revitalized the office and
renewed its credibility.
In the spring of 1990, Mr. Golden suggested at a meeting of the
executive committee of the Commission that the Commission convene
a meeting of the science advisors and ministers of science of the
G-7 countries, the European Union, and the Soviet Union. The meeting
should be completely informal, it would involve only principals,
and there would be no formal notes taken. He said that he had had
some discussions about the issue with Dr. Bromley and that Dr. Bromley
welcomed the idea.
The suggestion was discussed with the Commission as a whole, and
the idea was endorsed. A few of the members were skeptical that
the meetings would last beyond the first one or two, or that the
busy members would find the informal meetings useful, but all felt
that an experiment was worthwhile, particularly since Dr. Bromley
had agreed, as suggested by Mr. Golden, to co-chair the meeting,
along with Dr. Yuri Osip'yan from the Soviet Union.
The first two meetings (in February and October 1991) were sponsored
by the Commission and were held in the United States, but since
then they have achieved the self-sufficiency that the Commission
had hoped for. They have been held semiannually at sites in the
countries of the participants and have continued to be useful. The
membership has changed as the science advisors have changed, and
Russia has replaced the Soviet Union as a member. Of the original
members, only Dr. Wataru Mori of Japan continues in office (see
Appendix D). It is clear that these meetings
have enabled the members to engage in the broad informal discussions
between scientists that are so useful. The Commission was particularly
pleased that the group chose the name "The Carnegie Group"
as a way of distinguishing these meetings from the other, more formal
ones, that they might attend.
We are gratified that Dr. Bromley was willing to put together this
brief history of the early years of this informal group, from its
founding until he left it in 1993. We understand that Dr. Mori,
who supplied the photographs of some of the meetings, will be putting
together a follow-on volume. But most of all, we are gratified by
Dr. Bromley's statement that the group has "far more than fulfilled
our original expectations." The establishment of the Carnegie
Group, and its continuing usefulness, is clearly one of the highlights
of the Commission's work.
David Z. Robinson
Executive Director
Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government
INTRODUCTION
The Origins of the Carnegie Group
William T. Golden's path and mine have crossed very frequently--and
in many guises--over the past fifteen years, since we both served
on the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science. Over that period, reflecting Bill's long-time interest
in international science and his parallel interest in the presidential
science and technology advisory mechanisms in the United States,
we have had many discussions of how best to foster both the strengthening
of our international ties in science and technology and the strengthening
of the international component of the science and technology activities
focusing on the U.S. presidency.
It bears emphasis that it was Bill Golden who first suggested to
President Harry Truman something very close to our present presidential
advisory structure, and he has long had a deep interest in strengthening
the advisory mechanisms, as illustrated in his books, Science
Advice to the President; Science and Technology Advice to the President,
Congress, and Judiciary; and Worldwide Science and Technology
Advice to the Highest Levels of Governments.
When, in 1989, I was privileged to take up the position of Assistant
for Science and Technology to President George Bush, these books
and Bill's other writings on the subject provided a veritable manual
for me. I was fortunate, too, that in April 1988 David Hamburg,
the president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, had established
the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government,
co-chaired by Bill Golden and Joshua Lederberg. Over the next five
years the Commission produced nineteen reports on the various important
interfaces between science and technology and our government.
During one of our discussions in March of 1990, Mr. Golden and I
were discussing the problems of communication that were then very
evident among the senior science and technology advisors to heads
of state--whether they were called science advisors or ministers
of science and technology. We recognized that there were a great
many opportunities for bilateral or limited multilateral discussions,
but we also recognized that these tended to be very formal sessions
involving rather rigid agendas and the participation of relatively
large numbers of staff; there was, in fact, very little opportunity
for the senior members of the delegations from the different countries
to get to know one another in more than a superficial fashion. It
was also clear that there were no opportunities where a large number
of us with these senior advisory responsibilities could interact
and share insights and approaches to many of the problems that we
faced, in common, in our own countries.
Bill then asked me whether I thought that it would be possible and
useful to arrange a quite different kind of meeting in which a relatively
large cross-section of senior science and technology advisors could
interact in a much less formal fashion, and he mentioned that if
the idea turned out to be attractive to a number of potential participants,
then it might be possible to obtain financial support from the Carnegie
Commission.
We exchanged correspondence on this question in late March, and
on April 3, 1990, we had a lengthy telephone conversation during
which we developed the general outlines of a possible meeting. We
agreed, among other things, that the large number of participants
that we had initially envisaged would limit the usefulness of the
meeting and so decided that the group should be kept relatively
small. We decided that a natural group might involve the representatives
of the G-7R nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the
United Kingdom, and the United States), as well as representatives
from the European Community and the Soviet Union. We also decided
that the meeting should be held at an isolated location and that
there should be no staff present. Our intent was to provide as informal
an environment as possible and thus to permit a maximum amount of
personal interaction among the participants. In short, it was our
intent to provide a complement to the much more formal interactions
that were already in place, and, moreover, one that involved, simultaneously,
a substantially larger number of participants.
Bill then presented the possibility of such a meeting to the members
of the Executive Committee of the Carnegie Commission, and they
agreed to host the proposed group for an initial meeting at some
time within the coming year.
As we discussed possible sites for the meeting, both of us thought
immediately of the Seven Springs Center at Mount Kisco, New York--the
former estate of the Eugene Meyer family, which had owned the Washington
Post and other major U.S. newspapers. Originally the estate
had been given to Yale University, together with a generous endowment
to cover both its maintenance and upkeep, as well as basic staffing.
For reasons that are still very unclear to me, Yale decided that
it did not wish to retain the estate, and it was transferred to
the Rockefeller University, where Joshua Lederberg was then president.
The estate was roughly an hour's drive from the New York airports,
was secluded, and provided extremely comfortable quarters for both
the social and business aspects of the proposed meeting. President
Lederberg recognized the potential of this meeting and immediately
made the Seven Springs Center available to us. Thus it was that
the Carnegie Group, as it came to be known, took shape.
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