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On Mon, 26 Jul 1999 pnicholl@essesfpnet.ac.uk wrote:
> Re: Phyllis Creighton's comments on Federico Mayor's remarks.
>
> The World Conference on Science (which had rather minimal publicity) in
> Budapest was sponsored by UNESCO and ICSU (not to be confused with ICSI, a
> very different matter) and is described on the Nature web site at:
> http://helix.nature.com/wcs/ which has both positive and negative comments
> and criticisms and on the official site which has all documentation:
> http://www.unesco.org/science/wcs/index.htm
> Neither the conference documents (the final "declaration" and "framework
> for action" papers) nor Mayor's closing speech make the comments about the
> US which were only in the (presumably) Science article (Science being the
> vehicle for the American Association for the Advancement of Science) and
> intended for US consumption. What Mayor as UNESCO Director-General is
> trying to do is to get the US (like the UK recently did) to rejoin UNESCO.
> He is a politician who has to sweet talk the prospective subscriber. I
> would have done something similar.
> There were problems with the WCS, some of which are discussed in the Nature
> web site. It was certainly rather 'top down' with ministers for science and
> their advisors conspicuous ("men in suits"). And developing world delegates
> were disappointed that no clear international science funding program is in
> the works. But Josef Rotblat was there, pulled few punches, and got a
> rousing ovation at the end.
> Does the US have "a tradition of individual rights"? Of course it does.
> Parts of this tradition are even independent of the several levels of US
> government and expressed in both violent and non-violent ways by the groups
> out in the country that try to live outside the federal and state systems,
> some more successfully than others. It is not inconsistent politically (it
> may be morally) for a society with internal freedoms, including even
> uncomfortable ones, to behave oppressively externally and even internally
> where socially disadvantaged groups are involved. The British Empire did
> something similar with its (male) universal franchise and (middle class)
> freedoms at home combined with authoritarian (sometimes benign, often less
> so) rule abroad. But Mayor is surely right in principle - US predominance
> in science makes it essential for them to be on board any worthwhile
> international program (remember Johnson on J. Edgar Hoover - "I'd rather
> have him inside the tent.....etc.").
>
> Peter Nicholls, Department of Biological Sciences,
> Central Campus, University of Essex,
> Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, England.
>
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