THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION AND SCIENCE

WILLIAM W. WARNER

Just what in the Universe is the Smithsonian’s role?

Editor’s note: This article is based in part on a speech William W.Warner (CC ’83) drafted for Chief Justice Warren Burger, which was to be delivered September 6, 1971, on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Smithsonian Institution. Chief Justice Burger was unable to attend the celebration and the speech was never given. But these remarks remain uncannily on point in several respects, particularly in addressing the perilous and increasing inability of science policy administrators to embrace the critical distinction between basic or pure research and the applied sciences and technology. Another is the role of the private sector in funding basic research. Also, the critical role of the Smithsonian Institution as an apolitical, nongovernmental research and education organization is reaffirmed. All of the issues of concern drafted by Pulitzer Prize-winner William W.Warner are relevant not only to the beloved Smithsonian Institution in its current struggles to survive as the world’s preeminent museum complex, but as well to the critical role of basic research, the Wednesday’s Child of pure curiosity, which is fading almost irretrievably amidst the perceived need of the federal government to support primarily directed research.

You know, of course, that the Smithsonian often is referred to as “our nation’s attic.” It also is a place where fascinating research based on plain curiosity in a broad range of interests and disciplines takes place. Technically, and legally, there are no limits to the types of research and artifact collections that the Smithsonian Institution can pursue...if it has the necessary funds. The Smithsonian has made and will continue to make significant contributions to the needs of the federal research establishment, but its principal objective is the undirected pursuit of knowledge and making the findings available to the world public at large.

The Smithsonian’s preeminence among science museums has long been recognized. All together, there are 16 Smithsonian museums and galleries, the National Zoo, 7 scientific research centers, over 30 libraries and archives, 98 affiliate museums, and countless programs and initiatives. The National Museum of American History, as the Smithsonian’s Museum of History and Technology was renamed in 1980, is an invaluable chronology of American scientific discovery and technical ingenuity. At the National Museum of Natural History, there is a remarkable collection of over 124 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, and meteorites, as well as human artifacts. And the National Air and Space Museum, which opened its doors in 1976, is the most-visited museum in the world. But what happens behind the scenes at these and other Smithsonian museums and research facilities, for the most part out of the public eye, tells the real story of Smithsonian scholarly pursuits, and reveals its real objectives of basic research, artifact collections for every imaginable kind of investigation, and their use in education.

A STRANGE BEQUEST

But just what is the Smithsonian Institution? Why does it look and operate the way it does? It most certainly is not a government agency, nor a component of the executive branch of the federal government. It is not a part of the Congress or the Judiciary. Instead, it’s administered independently by a Board of Regents,much like a private board of trustees, consisting of members of the House of Representatives, the US Senate, and a number of private citizens, all appointed by Joint Resolution of the Congress. The Regents also include the Chief Justice of the United States, who acts as the Institution’s chancellor, and the Vice President of the United States. In fact, the Smithsonian Institution is a unique trust instrumentality for the benefit of the public, created by act of Congress for what James Smithson, in his original bequest, called the “increase [i.e., research] and diffusion [i.e., education] of knowledge among men.”

Trust instrumentalities are fictions created in English common law and find their roots primarily in the preparations by nobles and other landowners for the Crusades. It was a means of providing for continuity of legal ownership and care of their lands while they were absent for long periods, and might well not return. Trust law is extremely complicated and difficult to understand and apply, even to this day. Moreover, the Smithsonian Institution, as a trust instrumentality, continues to confuse members of Congress, the courts, and the executive branch. Nevertheless, the founding fathers knew exactly what they were doing when establishing the legal structure for managing James Smithson’s seed bequest, and the Smithsonian and its original purposes have remained substantially as they were intended to this day.

With surprising regularity, elements of the executive or legislative branches “discover” the fact that the Smithsonian is a non-governmental institution operating with a mix of private and public funds to pursue its purposes. Nevertheless, the Institution receives a preponderance of its support from federal appropriations and this discovery, realized by members of Congress on occasion, has led to the conclusion from time to time that there may be something wrong with this arrangement, and they have decided that steps must be taken to correct it.

One of the most important of such misunderstandings occurred in 1927, when it was proposed that the funds employed for research coming from the Smithsonian’s private endowment should be federalized, or possibly even turned over to the various states in what today we might call a matching or grant-in-aid program. Early on, Justice William Howard Taft made it clear that “the Smithsonian Institution is not and has never been considered a government bureau. It is a private institution under the guardianship of government.”

Justice Taft then explained that it was probably because the Institution administered for the federal government several of the public bureaus it created, by which he meant the Smithsonian’s major museums, that many people supposed the private research activities of the Smithsonian also to be part of the government.

If this all seems ambiguous, then I must say it is an ideal ambiguity. Why? In answering this question, it’s useful to make a comparison with the establishment of the Peace Corps. The story is told that early in his tenure as secretary of state, Dean Rusk was asked by a somewhat skeptical reporter how the Peace Corps would relate to the Department of State, and what it might contribute to American foreign policy. Secretary Rusk thought a moment and replied; “The Peace Corps will best contribute to the foreign policy of the United States by not becoming part it.”

In similar fashion, the Smithsonian has made and will continue to make its most significant research and educational contributions to the needs of the public precisely because it is not an organizational part of the federal government. The Smithsonian is and ever should remain, in my opinion, a center for the independent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, i.e., basic research under a form of limited federal guardianship. This is a difficult role for which to gain support in the best of times. It would be an almost impossible role were the Smithsonian an integral and totally dependent part of the federal science bureaucracy, where basic or pure research takes a very distant back seat in the federal funding process to the pressing and immediate needs of directed or applied research. A striking example of this rationale exists in a letter addressed simply to the Smithsonian Institution, with an almost desperate plea for research funds:

Dear Sirs: This communication I had intended sending a little later, but I feel that it would not be desirable to delay any longer. Incidentally, I think it would be best not to make it public.

For a number of years I have been at work upon a method of raising recording apparatus[es] to altitudes exceeding the limit for sounding balloons....I have reached the limit of the work I can do single-handed. Four years ago...I developed a theory of rocket action, in general... I have applied the theory to cases which my experiments show must be realizable in practice, and I find that a mass of one pound could be elevated to altitudes of 35, 72, and 232 miles.

I realize that in sending this communication I have taken a certain liberty, but I feel that is to [you] alone that I must look, now that I cannot continue the work unassisted.

Dated September 27, 1916, the letter is signed by one Robert H. Goddard. It’s hard to imagine any government or corporate executive taking serious notice of such a pathetic tone today. No doubt the letter would merit a polite “no,” or simply be tossed in the wastebasket.

The Smithsonian, however, investigated Goddard’s request with interest. Goddard was interested in studies of the upper atmosphere; rockets were but the vehicle to get there. Smithsonian Secretary Charles Walcott was interested in flight, and was chairman of the National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics, the parent body, of today’s NASA. By happy coincidence, there also was a young scientist on the Smithsonian staff who carefully read Goddard’s paper, checked the experimental data, and recommended support. This scientist, Charles G. Abbot, later became the fifth Smithsonian secretary.

The Institution promptly issued a grant of $5,000 from its private, non-appropriated funds to support Goddard’s work. This support was continued to some degree for 14 years, as Goddard and his Smithsonian supporters were ridiculed in the press as “moon-mad scientists.” Of discouragement there was plenty, and at one point Goddard seriously considered returning the grant monies to the Smithsonian. But at length, in 1926, he succeeded in launching a 10-foot rocket powered by liquid oxygen and gasoline from his aunt’s farm in Worcester, Massachusetts. He described the blast-off rather poetically in a letter to Charles Abbot, who shared his interests and had faith in him:

It looked almost magical as it rose, without any great noise or flame, as if it said, “I’ve been here long enough; I think I’ll go somewhere else if you don’t mind.”

Goddard went on to say that the rocket went up for all of 1,000 feet in a ten-second flight, but conceded that these were “not precisely extreme altitudes.” But the principle had been found. The rocket flew that day, and with that flight opened the first chapter in the history of American preeminence in space exploration.

There are many other equally fascinating examples of the value of the Institution’s traditional support of basic research. In 1895, for instance, the Smithsonian assisted Edward Morley in his studies of the relative weight of hydrogen and oxygen. Morley had no interest whatsoever in the practical applications of his work, but they ultimately led to the discovery of isotopes, which have wide industrial and medical uses today.

Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian and a physicist, had a favorite phrase for the venerable original building best known as “The Castle” and the company of scholars he began to assemble there. He called it a “College of Discoverers,” an excellent description of the Smithsonian’s research activities, then and now. And if the Smithsonian does indeed remain a “College of Discoverers,” it is precisely because of its public-private duality, or this “ideal ambiguity.” Through this duality, it has enjoyed the flexibility of undirected research, which so often leads to discoveries of far greater import than many of the products of applied research. Equally important, though less dramatic than punctuated discovery from basic research, is the Smithsonian’s patient work in record-keeping and long-term observation of man and nature.

FINDING THE FUNDS

And now, as much as ever, Smithsonian scientists are at the forefront of scientific discovery on hundreds of topics of relevance to what goes on in and around our world in 2003...and beyond. That is not to say they work in an ivory tower, out of touch with the corporate world. How challenging it might be if private industry, with its arsenal of computer-age technologies, were to come to the great public testing ground of the Smithsonian’s museums and galleries to gauge national attitudes from the Institution’s millions of annual visitors. Think of the opportunity for learning more about who we are and what we are thinking.

To that end, the Smithsonian established a membership category a few decades back to accommodate Corporate Members. These members not only help the Smithsonian’s private funding campaigns, but also in effect serve as an advisory board, or meeting ground, where the Smithsonian and private industry can determine their mutual interests. But the eternal guard must be against any untoward influence or control by industry, as well as the Congress, over what the Smithsonian will pursue in the way of research by its scientists, and what will be exhibited to the public by its educators and scientists working together. Objectivity and credibility are everything, and they must not be compromised either in the laboratories or the exhibit halls.

Nevertheless, think also of the legitimate opportunity for the Smithsonian to work with American industry to help the industry tell its own story, especially through the National Museum of American History, the foremost center for research and public education regarding America’s industrial history and technological primacy. This opportunity may be more vital than it first appears. Large segments of our population, especially young Americans, are confused or even angry over the technological changes and the environmental alterations that seemingly overwhelm them, and they must have available the hands-on educational exhibits of a museum that can help provide balanced views in context.

Private industry and foundation support for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, established in 1968, is another important step in the evolution of the Smithsonian’s research and education agendas. The Woodrow Wilson Center, in many ways a reincarnation of Joseph Henry’s College of Discovers, occupied the very same quarters in the original “Castle” building. Wilson Center scholars from here and abroad are working on the great problem areas of our time, not in regimented and politicized teams or task forces, but through the simpler and stronger bonds built of shared fields of interest. In its first year, the Wilson Center chose scholars sharing interests in such areas, for example, as international law and the resources of the open oceans, and the sometimes conflicting interests of government operations and the press. Globalization, Russian party politics, mediating ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, and the future of the Chinese Communist Party—all topics that few would have dreamed likely to become critical issues even two decades ago—are among the many topics pursued by the Center’s current group of research fellows.

These examples provide, at best, a series of snapshots of the fascinating range of research pursued at the Smithsonian. This is the Smithsonian we should all celebrate—and treasure. And this is the Smithsonian that must grow and develop in the years to come. A nation that cannot afford to gather such bodies of knowledge or take the risks of undirected pursuit of knowledge simply for the sake of knowledge is a poor nation, and a nation that runs the greater risk of cultural impoverishment, and ultimate societal collapse.

There is nothing in the 156-year history of the Smithsonian Institution to suggest it is running against dangerous, or even impossible, head winds or deadly squalls...at least none it cannot handle with strong, shrewd, thoughtful, and committed guardianship provided by both the government and the private sector. It is my view that the best protection for the Smithsonian’s long and important traditional freedom to pursue basic research is strengthening the independent and private character of the Institution, and living by the principles of independent, open, and basic research.More cooperation with private industry and other non-public resources, not less, is the best way to bring true discoveries to a broad and better-informed public. The one guarantees the increase of knowledge, so cherished by James Smithson; the other, its proper diffusion.

William W.Warner (CC ’83) is the recipient of several awards for non- fiction writing. He is a former assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Peace Corps official, and foreign service officer serving posts in Chile, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.

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