Laurie L. Patton and Goodwin Liu
There are many reasons to celebrate our nation’s 250th year. Among the most important is the prosperity that is deeply rooted in the free pursuit of knowledge in America.
When John Adams and his colleagues wrote that “wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people” were “necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties,” they could not have foreseen the political, cultural, economic, scientific, artistic, educational, and military achievements that such a deep commitment to learning would produce. The resilience to meet generational challenges and adapt to change and the power of our example to the world are the fruits of that commitment.
When our forebears penned the Declaration of Independence, they understood learning and the free pursuit of knowledge to undergird all three of the inalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Learning provides the very conditions for thriving—as powerfully today as it did at the heroic moment our nation came into being.
Our founders understood that a strong nation depends on a government willing to lead—recognizing that investment in both basic and applied research is a true public good, one the private sector cannot shoulder alone. The freedom of our colleges and universities to shape teaching and curricula has created a wide range of educational choices for people from all backgrounds and helped make the American higher education system the strongest in the world.
When conditions that support the free pursuit of knowledge are threatened, citizens have a responsibility to speak out. Today, as part of honoring the dignity and power of our nation, we call attention to those risks and urge a renewed commitment to the free conditions that form the basis of research and teaching in America. We embrace the importance of ongoing efforts to reform public funding mechanisms. These and other reform efforts in institutions of learning are essential to the thriving of knowledge in a democracy. Such efforts should strengthen, not undermine, the very foundations upon which knowledge is produced.
We affirm three principles here.
- Public investment in the free pursuit of knowledge should include all branches of knowledge. The sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts all contribute to human flourishing and national strength; no branch of knowledge should be singled out for exclusion from support. The deprioritization of entire sectors of research hobbles the advancement of learning and innovation that sustain a thriving democracy.
- American citizens deserve the assurance of steady, reliable leadership and a predictable rhythm in public funding. When funding cycles are abruptly disrupted or oversight is reshuffled without warning, instability takes root—and long-term projects, which are essential to basic research and paradigm-shifting discoveries, cannot flourish.
- The free pursuit of knowledge must rest in the hands of those who exercise it, not in the chambers of political office. When state or national legislatures adjudicate the merits of education or scholarship on political grounds—whether left, right, or center—they cast a shadow of censorship and stifle the open exchange of ideas across difference, the very spirit that animates the Declaration of Independence.
The free pursuit of knowledge is at the heart of our power to serve and to lead, and has been one of the greatest sources of America’s strength over the past 250 years. It should remain a polestar for the centuries ahead.
Laurie L. Patton and Goodwin Liu