Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneYoung
Could you guys give us the gist of the speech or tell us where we could look for it? Sounds like it made an impact.
|
It actually was one of the very few of Dean's speeches that had almost nothing to do with FIRST. To begin, it is important to understand the context. Each year, about 300 of the largest research universities in the country send their university presidents to Congress. They come, accompanied by their Congressional Liaison Officers, to lobby Congress to allocate more Federal funds for university research programs. On the day of their visit to The Hill, they gather for a breakfast forum to hear a few speakers, get a pep talk or two, and organize their efforts to scatter and visit every Senator and Representative. In one day, they visit every Congressional office and ask, beg, plead, and cajole for more basic research funds to be allocated in the Federal budget, and specifically for more funds to be earmarked and be sent their particular institutions. It is pork barrel lobbying at its very finest.
In 2001, Dr Charles Vest was the president of MIT and was in charge of organizing this particular event. He asked Dean to come and be the guest speaker at the breakfast forum (I guess, assuming that he would talk about cool technology stuff and things going on at DEKA and how basic research was a good thing, etc etc etc). Dean accepted, but the speech he gave was not one that anyone there was expecting.
I will never forget Dean's opening lines: "I want you to know that I am here under protest. I believe that everything you are doing here is repugnant and ethically wrong. And now I am going to tell you why..." And for the next 35 minutes, that is exactly what he did.
The message was loud and clear: why in the world are you crawling to Washington to kiss the behind of some twit politician that never got better than a "C" in high school science? Just to beg for financial table scraps from the government? Why don't you think about the organizations that benefit the very most from the research you do - the corporations, the ones that make products (and therefore money) from your research output? Why don't you ask THEM to fund basic research? They are the greatest benefactors, should they not be the greatest contributors? You are attacking an easy source just because it is easy, rather than because it is appropriate. Shame on you.
The amount of defensiveness, self-righteous indignation, and puffery in the room was palpable. The entire room of university presidents (and the one Senator that had just received a special "advocate for science" award from the group and, just before Dean spoke, announced how proud he was to receive a "science award" - particularly since he never received better than a "C" in high school science) sat there spluttering over their eggs and cold toast. They had no idea how to respond. It was awesome.
Dean wrapped up his diatribe by then saying "oh yeah, and we have some of our FIRST teams here to show you their robots and talk to you about how real companies and organizations show their support. You need to talk to them."
As John said, it was one of those "Wow - how do we react to that?" moments.
-dave
.