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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
This is a time when the nation expects every man to do his duty. The first duty of a learned profession is to determine how its members can be of greatest usefulness. This report is intended to be an analysis of possible and proper contributions which political scientists may make to the national effort. For the most part, it suggests ways and means to the individual; it makes few recommendations for action by the Association.
This report examines the opportunities for public service which are available to political scientists in the following fields of activity: (1) in public employment; (2) in undertaking tasks for the federal government; (3) in undertaking needed research; (4) in training persons for the public service; (5) in advancing public understanding of war-time and post-war problems; and (6) in strengthening democratic institutions and ways. Much of what is said on each of these subjects will be applicable to other social sciences and to colleges and universities as a whole.
1 If this account of the “demand” for political science training in federal research positions errs, it is undoubtedly in that it pictures the situation too favorably for the political scientist. Writing in 1940, Lewis B. Sims, then with the Bureau of the Census, said: “Under present conditions, there is hardly a position in the federal civil service that the professional political scientist per se can fill. It is almost inconceivable at the present time that an appointing officer, in one of the social or economic agencies in Washington, should call upon the Civil Service Commission for a ‘political scientist.’ … The pure political scientist, if he is looking for a career in the federal government, needs a new federal government! There is no place for him as such—or practically none.” Friedrich, C. J. and Mason, E. S., eds., Public Policy (Harvard University Press, 1940), pp. 288–289, 293.Google Scholar Since Sims wrote, the war-time scarcity of man-power has led to greater employment of political scientists, but even so the chief of the Civil Service Commission's unit charged with placement of economists, political scientists, and statisticians states emphatically that the above quoted remarks “are still essentially true.”
2 Such a committee has been formed and is under the chairmanship of Marshall E. Dimock.
3 The Engineering, Science, Management Defense Training Program (ESMDT) calls for the federal government, through the Office of Education, to reimburse colleges and universities for the costs incurred in providing short courses in certain specified fields of skill and knowledge.
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