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150 Years of Advancing Science: A History of AAAS
AAAS and Science: 1900-1940
AAAS had a role in influencing policy in the early 20th
century. One such effort was the AAAS Committee of One Hundred on
Scientific Research. Created in 1913, the Committee was a highly
visible activity which engaged the efforts of many AAAS members.
However, it suffered from a cumbersome organizational structure and an
ambiguous mission. Perhaps its most useful product was a directory of funds
available for research work prepared by MIT physicist Charles R. Cross,
the first installment of which appeared in Science in April 1916.
Although AAAS seldom shrank from positions in favor of more research,
the political atmosphere of the late 1910s and 1920s caused it to pull
back from more controversial issues. At the 1919 annual meeting in
St. Louis the Council passed a resolution urging "that sectional officers
avoid placing on their programs papers relating to political questions
on which public opinion is divided."
 The
AAAS Council's "Declaration of Intellectual Freedom," published in Science
in December of 1933. |
Science began to report on the rise of fascism and its impacts on
scientists as early as January 1932. Subsequent issues reprinted
reports and denunciations of Nazi treatment of Jewish professors from other
journals and, in a signed note from the 1930s, Cattell himself condemned
these actions. In December 1933, the AAAS Council adopted a "Declaration
of Intellectual Freedom," that condemned "threatening inroads upon intellectual
freedom" as "a major crime against civilization itself," but never mentioned
the situation in Germany.
During the Depression era of the 1930s, a progressivist science and
society movement gained momentum both within the American scientific community
and among AAAS leaders. Under permanent secretary F. R. Moulton and
president E. G. Conklin, a Committee on Intellectual Freedom and Social
Responsibility was appointed at the Atlantic City meeting in 1936.
It proposed a series of five conferences on science and civilization.
The first, devoted to "Fundamental Resources as Affected by Science," was
held at the December 1937 AAAS meeting in Indianapolis and drew national
attention. Concern with the social implications of science and the
responsilibities of scientists was a strong theme at the 1938 meeting in
Richmond, Virginia.
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