Giving $50,000 minus some-odd dollars per year makes us all more or less responsible for things at Brown — what the University does for society, how it helps it and how it hurts it. So we should all be a little worried about the sciences because some scientists make terrible things happen.
This is not a column about how making advanced weapons for use by the U.S. government is bad. It is bad, and I do not think the reasons why are that complicated. The U.S. wages unjust wars and uses extremely powerful and deadly munitions — for example, cluster bombs, which nearly every marginally human-rights-respecting country in the world thinks should be banned — to kill people, often 100 percent innocent people. Our military budget, six times larger than China's or anyone else's, is bloated and dumb and underscores the insanity of the American federal government. This is not particularly insightful or original, but it is true and it is important.
Universities produce the steady stream of scientists, engineers, mathematicians and computer science concentrators that makes this war effort possible. Educated, brilliant scientists came up with hydrogen bombs, Agent Orange, mustard gas, cluster bombs, napalm, Predator drones and armor-piercing bullets. Even more insidiously, they made it possible to spy on millions of people with unprecedented sophistication.
The problem is that a bunch of really great engineers and other science, technology, engineering and math-inclined people are going to graduate from Brown and take secure, challenging and high-paying jobs. Far too often, that is going to mean General Dynamics or Northrop Grumman or some other defense contractor, which puts all of us, at best, in an ethical grey area.
Science departments — particularly engineering, just speaking from personal experience — do not do a great job of addressing this reality. In the first introductory engineering course, for example, a parade of speakers talks about the exciting developments in their particular engineering field, and for that part of class, you do not have to take notes. It's great. But not once does the question of ethics in science get raised, not once are engineers encouraged to think about the broader implications of what they do.
And I get it: They are science classes concerned with science. None of us are 12, and we are all presumably grown-ups who can think for ourselves and know enough to decide whether to spend our lives blowing up innocent Arabs. But — not to dump on technical schools, because technical schools are great — this is not a technical school. It is a liberal arts university where we are, in theory, concerned with more than learning a trade. According to our mission statement, we are all about "educating and preparing students to discharge the offices of life with usefulness and reputation." Putting aside how stupidly worded the statement is, we need to take steps to make sure we deal with this goal.
There are some things we can do. Components of course curricula should directly address ethical concerns. The Science and Society courses Brown offers are great. While I get that there is a massive time crunch, some of these questions should be incorporated into introductory science classes. It is just as important to know what a force is doing as it is to know that it equals mass times acceleration.
Some law schools help out with loan repayment when their graduates go on to lower-paying, more societally beneficial jobs. I think it would be great to see our undergraduate and graduate programs offer some kind of assistance along these lines to deter people from moving right into lucrative defense contractors.
Finally, there is the question of what kind of research goes on at Brown. This is a tough one, because the records are not readily accessible and I am lazy and do not like research. But we have done nuclear research in the past, which is a bad thing. And some research definitely goes on here that has potential weapons applications. A formal anti-destruction policy for funded projects would be terrific.
When you get right down to it, though, it is mostly on us. I think I am too young and too dumb to morally exhort anyone, but I guess STEM people who care about things should morally exhort themselves to think long and hard about how we impact society and what we can do as scientists to make the world a place with fewer explosions rather than more. The movement for ethics in the sciences is very important. We are one university and can only accomplish so much, but we can sure as hell try.
Daniel Moraff is a mediocre engineer with an email address.
