I am writing this in mid-July, at a moment when early summer is tilting into late summer. (This morning I heard cicadas buzzing for the first time.) In E51 we are poised between the past academic year (financial closing just over, teaching assignments made, thank-you notes getting written) and the coming one (calendar of events getting filled in, incoming students asking more detailed questions, requests for more space coming in).

Before too many new tasks begin to accumulate, I would like to reflect back on a busy and productive year for MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society. In academic life, as in life generally, among the most important events are welcoming new people and seeing them grow. During the past year STS was proud to see David Kaiser promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, and to hire David Jones (who has M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard) as Assistant Professor, beginning officially in July 2005 (he has one more year of residency and will work approximately half-time in STS until then).

The graduate program in the History and Social Study of Science and Technology, which STS administers, also welcomed new people: we admitted four students (Xaq Frohlich, Chihyung Jeon, Sophia Roosth, Sara Ann Wylie). We were also proud to graduate four doctoral students, all of whom are going on to excellent jobs: Babak Ashrafi to the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics as an historian; Rachel Prentice to a tenure-track STS assistant professorship at Cornell; Bill Turkel to a tenure-track job in the history department at the University of Western Ontario; and Tim Wolters to a tenure-track position at the Utah State University.

Students in the HSSST graduate program continue to be remarkably successful at winning fellowships for research and education. Nick Buchanan received a United States Department of Education Jacob K. Javits fellowship. Candis Callison was made a member of the Martin Family Society of Graduate Fellows in Sustainability for 2004-2005. Kieran Downes has been appointed the first IGERT [Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training] program trainee in the new $2.9 million, five-year NSF-sponsored program in emerging technologies jointly awarded to STS, the Technology and Policy Program, and Political Science. Nate Greenslit received an NSF dissertation support grant; an American Psychoanalytic Association fellowship; and became a research fellow of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

Among our more peripatetic students, Shane Hamilton received a Fellowship in Contemporary History, Public Policy, and American Politics from the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. Meg Hiesinger was awarded a highly competitive Luce Fellowship for a year’s study in the Far East. Jenny Smith did research in Russia this past year on Soviet agriculture in the 1930s under an IREX grant, and has just been awarded a Kenan Fellowship to continue this work. Along with Jenny, Sandy Brown, Peter Shulman, and Anya Zilberstein were selected as recipients of the Dibner Institute Graduate Fellowships for the coming academic year.

Such core activities will always be the heart of STS, but what makes us unique at MIT is the extent of our connections with the larger Institute and beyond. Consider the following indicators:

• Of our 13 active faculty members, six have joint or dual appointments with other units, and almost all have close working ties with other units here.

• Of our 49 subject offerings, 19 are offered jointly with other departments.

• In our graduate classes, approximately 2/3 of the students enrolled are from programs other than our own HSSST program.

During the past academic year, these ties to “greater MIT” were supplemented by an unusual range of connections to the world beyond MIT through visiting scholars and visiting professors. We had a dozen visiting scholars, some of whom had support from various sources (fellowships, home institutions, and the like) and all of whom wanted to be part of the STS community for a research year. Some of them had done this before (Claire Calcagno, Anna McCann, Vic McElheny, Constance Perin, Michael Stiefel, Sara Wermeil, Susann Wilkinson) while for some this was their first appointment (Jimena Canales, Joe Corn, Alan Davidson, Slava Gerovitch, Emily Thompson, Ulrich Wengenroth).

Many visiting scholars gave a Brown Bag luncheon during the year. One of them, Alan Davidson, an MIT graduate (S.B. 1989, M.S. from the Technology and Policy Program in 1993) and associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C., gave a series of four lectures during the spring term on the theme of “Liberty by Design.” As a lawyer, he discussed challenges to privacy, free speech, and fair use posed by evolving information technologies.

In addition, STS hosted a number of distinguished visiting professors:

• Koffi Maglo, a Martin Luther King Visiting Scholar, was co-sponsored by the Philosophy Faculty and STS, with the cooperation of the Dibner Institute. A historian and philosopher of science, Professor Maglo taught undergraduate and graduate classes.

• Svante Lindqvist, director of the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, was here for six weeks this fall, including “Nobel Week.” He taught a four-session (non-credit-bearing) fall term seminar in four consecutive weeks, which was well-attended and brought together many different parts of the MIT community.

• Manuel Castells, whose home base is now the Open University of Catalonia (he also teaches each fall at the University of Southern California), was brought to MIT for a week in January by STS, the Media Lab, and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He taught a one-session faculty seminar and a five-session graduate seminar that were over-subscribed and by all accounts highly successful.

Koffi Maglo will be back again this coming year, as will Manuel Castells for a longer visit (two weeks in early April). STS will again have a large number of visiting scholars and will again be hosting a lively colloquium series. In addition, STS will host two special events. In early December we will have a book reading and party to celebrate the many publications of STS faculty and community members in the past two years. On February 25, 2005, we will honor retiring faculty member Evelyn Fox Keller with a luncheon followed by an afternoon of speakers who will speak about her wide-ranging contributions to the history and philosophy of science.

Much else will be happening beyond STS that will affect us, maybe profoundly. The United States will elect a new president, MIT will name a new president, the ongoing curricular review at MIT will begin to generate recommendations, faculty and students will generate new research and teaching projects…. In just a few weeks, the moment of equipoise will be over, the tasks for the coming academic year will be piling up, and the cicadas will be humming much more loudly.

Rosalind Williams

21 July 2004