Student Group Tries to Wed the Scientific to a Social Agenda

In 1957, a group of Soviet and American scientists met privately in a restored lobster storehouse on the seashore in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, to discuss ways of averting a nuclear conflagration, the first such post-World War II conference of its kind.

The initial meeting grew to become International Pugwash, which each year sponsors an annual conference on science and world affairs, gathering together scientists from all over the world to talk about issues of great import common to all nations. The Pugwash influence has been felt in countless ways during the past 30 years, laying the groundwork for international cooperation on arms control issues and on terrorism.

A decade ago, an ambitious UC San Diego political science undergraduate persuaded professor Roger Revelle, a founder of UCSD and world-renowned oceanographer active in Pugwash, to let him attend the group’s annual meeting in Munich.

Student Group Born

Out of that request by Jeffrey Leifer developed Student Pugwash, a little-known but increasingly influential association of college students and alumni intended to affect future national policy concerning the environment, nuclear weapons, biotechnology and other areas where science and technology shape society.

This weekend, Student Pugwash marked its 10th anniversary by returning to UCSD with a board meeting to chart its future in a restored cottage overlooking the Pacific Ocean at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. On Friday night, the group heard a member describe a recent meeting in Moscow with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

The organization has held biennial conferences and symposiums on issues ranging from artificial insemination to computer privacy, and now has more than 30 chapters on campuses in the United States, Canada and Europe. Funding comes from a variety of philanthropic foundations, including a recent $300,000 challenge grant from the prestigious MacArthur Foundation.

But for many Student Pugwash participants, the group has worked its greatest influence by giving them the tools to consider how their scientific background in physics, or biology, or computers can be melded with a social agenda.

‘Subtle Impact’

“It’s a subtle impact but it’s there,” said Nancy Pfund, a board member who works for Hambrecht & Quist of San Francisco, a venture capital/investment firm that specializes in raising funds for high-technology companies.

“What I’m doing is (raising) venture capital for companies in innovative environmental technology, and in doing so implementing some of the social agenda that I have into broad economic activities in the U.S.,” she said. “And that can be a very difficult thing to do.”

Pfund was graduated from Stanford University with a degree in biology and anthropology before receiving her master’s degree in business administration at Yale University.

She said that Student Pugwash, with alumni and senior board advisers from academia and industry--including Jonas Salk and John Rollwagen, the chairman of Cray Computers--can provide members with role models and a network of contacts to make it easier for students to take science and ethic issues into corporations and government.

“If we were to have more people in government staff positions familiar with science issues, knowing that science is not value-free and consists of trade-offs with society, then we will improve the way decisions are made,” Pfund said.

Organized ’83 Conference

Mike Berger, a UCSD alumnus who organized the 1983 Student Pugwash conference at the University of Michigan, now works for the Congressional Budget Office after spending some time at the Pentagon. Scott Saleska, a physics graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now consults for a firm advising the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Organization founder Leifer structures tax-exempt bonds for school districts and cities as chief operating officer for First Interstate Public Investment in Los Angeles.

“What I’ve been able to do is open up a whole new universe of listeners so that Pugwash concerns can be fused with the business community,” Leifer said. “At our June conference at Stanford, we brought 50 corporate leaders in to meet students and have a good dialogue on issues and decision-making with those who make the decisions.”

The point of Student Pugwash is not to advocate specific views on issues but to sensitize college students to think about the social and ethical implications in advance of the professional careers they are preparing for, Leifer said.

“Quite honestly, we are hoping to foster more socially responsible actions through the ripple effect,” Leifer said.

While Leifer originally intended Student Pugwash as only one or two major conferences, the concept has been expanded to include individual university chapters, from MIT to Emory University in Atlanta to several campuses in Germany, England, Bulgaria and Hungary. Those chapters address particular issues of campus or regional concern, depending on the interests and enthusiasm of members.

At Emory, the chapter has brought together high school and college educators in the nation’s first conference on a nuclear education curriculum. At MIT, Student Pugwash members have called for inclusion of science and ethics in the engineering department curriculum.