Harvard Book Store: Science for the People: Documents from America's Movement of Radical Scientists

Date: 

Friday, May 4, 2018, 3:00pm

Location: 

Harvard Book Store 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA
Free and Open to the Public. 

For more info: http://www.harvard.com/event/sigrid_schmalzer_daniel_s._chard_and_alyssa_botelho/

Harvard Book Store welcomes UMass Amherst history professor SIGRID SCHMALZER, UMass Amherst history lecturer DANIEL S. CHARD, and Harvard MD/Ph.D. candidate ALYSSA BOTELHO for a discussion of their co-edited book, Science for the People: Documents from America's Movement of Radical Scientists.

About Science for the People

For the first time, this book compiles original documents from Science for the People, the most important radical science movement in U.S. history. Between 1969 and 1989, Science for the People mobilized American scientists, teachers, and students to practice a socially and economically just science, rather than one that served militarism and corporate profits. Through research, writing, protest, and organizing, members sought to demystify scientific knowledge and embolden "the people" to take science and technology into their own hands. The movement's numerous publications were crucial to the formation of science and technology studies, challenging mainstream understandings of science as "neutral" and instead showing it as inherently political. Its members, some at prominent universities, became models for politically engaged science and scholarship by using their knowledge to challenge, rather than uphold, the social, political, and economic status quo.

Highlighting Science for the People's activism and intellectual interventions in a range of areas―including militarism, race, gender, medicine, agriculture, energy, and global affairs―this volume offers vital contributions to today's debates on science, justice, democracy, sustainability, and political power.

Praise

"This volume is long overdue. Its value is to illuminate the critical role of Science for the People in generating scholarly understandings of how science and technology are shaped by power relations, and to illuminate the ways in which these relationships might be drawn upon to produce a more just society. It will be a very important contribution to the history of science, and to science and technology studies." ―Kelly Moore, author of Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945–1975

Event Series: Friday Forum

Harvard Book Store's Friday Forum series takes place on Friday afternoons during the academic year as a way to highlight scholarly books in a wide range of fields, with a particular focus on local scholars. Friday Forums take place at 3pm in Harvard Book Store.

Purchase the Book
Featured event books will be for sale at the event for 20% off. Thank you for supporting this author series with your purchases.