COSSA’s 2009 Annual Report
Executive Director's Report
The fifth presidential administration in COSSA’s history arrived on January 20, 2009 faced with what has been called “the worst economic situation since the Great Depression.” President Obama had campaigned on “change we can believe in,” but soon faced daunting challenges to his agenda. As part of the response to the economic catastrophe, the Administration pushed through Congress the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). With the strong support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the members of Congress who had help pass the America COMPETES Act in 2008, funding for scientific research became an important part of ARRA. COSSA joined many others in the scientific community advocating successfully for the inclusion of $3 billion for the National Science Foundation (NSF), $10.2 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research. These additional funds provided researchers, including social and behavioral scientists, unique opportunities to garner support for their projects. In addition, the Science of Science and Innovation Policy program at NSF took advantage of the natural experiment created by ARRA to support investigations of how the extra funding impacts science and innovation policy.
As is the case with any new Administration, the presentation of its initial budget did not occur until late spring. This pushed the regular appropriations process later into the year, and once again Congress did not finish the spending bills for fiscal year 2010 by its start on October 1. During congressional consideration of these bills, COSSA and the social and behavioral sciences faced renewed challenges to the legitimacy of federal funding for its research.
When the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations bill came before the House of Representatives in July, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) proposed an amendment to rescind or prohibit NIH from spending money on three currently-funded, peer-reviewed grants that focus on HIV/AIDS prevention among vulnerable populations. The Coalition for the Protection of Research, a COSSA/American Psychological Association co-chaired group made up of social/behavioral science, biomedical, and other groups interested in protecting peer review, rallied the community against the Issa amendment. Rather than provoke a debate on the House floor on the substantive merits of the research, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Obey (D-WI) simply accepted the amendment. His intention was to eliminate the amendment later in the process during the House-Senate conference on the bill. That occurred and the grants were protected.
In October, when the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill finally reached the Senate floor, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) called for the elimination of the political science program at NSF. COSSA again swung into action organizing and coordinating the response to the amendment. COSSA helped to mobilize the American Political Science Association, other COSSA members, the higher education and others in the science community. COSSA worked with Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and her staff and the NSF Office of Legislative and Public Affairs to develop the arguments to defend the political science program. The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to political scientist Elinor Ostrom proved to be a fortuitous event that became part of the successful argument that defeated Coburn’s amendment. In addition, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ proclaimed support for the importance of the social/behavioral sciences also helped Senator Mikulski convince her colleagues to reject Coburn’s amendment.
With the decennial census a year away, COSSA spent considerable time in 2009 concerned with the preparations for the 2010 count. With the resignation of Census Bureau director Steve Murdock in December 2008, early in 2009 the most important focus was on getting a new director appointed. COSSA, along with many other stakeholders, pushed for an early appointment by the new administration. With the nomination of Robert Groves in April, COSSA’s efforts shifted toward getting him confirmed by the Senate. That finally happened in July and Groves appeared at the COSSA Annual Meeting in November.
COSSA also joined many others in opposing an unsuccessful amendment sponsored by Senator David Vitter (R-LA) to the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill that would have made it more difficult to count all Americans and added large costs to the already most expensive decennial count in history. As a member of the 2010 Census Advisory Committee, COSSA has also been part of the process providing advice to the Bureau on its 2010 plans.
At the National Institutes of Health, COSSA’s long standing relationship with Raynard Kington (he spoke at a COSSA Congressional briefing in 1996) allowed for continuing consultations on the role of the social/behavioral sciences there. Kington, who served as NIH’s Acting Director until the confirmation of new Director Francis Collins in September, and who then returned to his former post as Deputy Director, was instrumental in the development of the COSSA-supported OppNet initiative, which will provide $120 million of NIH funds to support social/behavioral research funding over the next five years. Through its continued leadership of the Coalition for the Advancement of Health Through Behavioral and Social Science Research (CAHT-BSSR), COSSA continued to interact with NIH’s Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR). Although the Office continues to search for a permanent director, Christine Bachrach spent 2009 as Acting Director and helped COSSA present a major exhibition on Capitol Hill of OBSSR-related research.
At NSF a major transition occurred with the departure of David Lightfoot as Assistant Director for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate (SBE) after four years. The culmination of Lightfoot’s tenure was the publication of Social, Behavioral and Economic Research in the Federal Context, which emerged in the final days of the Bush Administration from the inter-agency National Science and Technology Council. COSSA joined the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in sponsoring a briefing on the report on Capitol Hill, which included opening remarks from two social/behavioral scientist members of the House, Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) and Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL).
The disappointment over Lightfoot’s departure soon turned to delight with the arrival in November of Myron Gutmann, former COSSA President and director of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, as the new head of the SBE directorate. As part of its traditional advocacy for SBE, COSSA testified in support of NSF’s budget increase to the Congress.
New personnel, or more accurately, the return of old leadership at the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) in the person of new Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson, has also led to a renewal of support for research and statistics there and an emphasis on evidence-based crime policy. One of the new Administration’s proposals was to include a set-aside of OJP program funds for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). COSSA strongly supported in submitted testimony to the Appropriations Committee the set-aside as well as the large increase for BJS to help revitalize the National Crime Victimization Survey. Late in the year, the Administration nominated two distinguished scientists, John Laub and James Lynch to lead NIJ and BJS respectively.
As of this writing, they both continue to await Senate confirmation.
The set-aside notion also occurred to the new Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development Shaune Donovan as a way to implement the recommendations of a National Academies’ report to revitalize the moribund Office of Policy Development and Research (OPD&R). Former USC Professor and a member of the Academies’ panel Raphael Bostic took over OPD&R and came to the COSSA Annual Meeting to explain his plans for reinvigorating that office.
The new Administration also committed itself to implementing the recommendations of the 2008 Farm Bill to reemphasize science at the Department of Agriculture. The Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service became the National Institute on Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and enhanced resources went to the competitive grants research program now renamed the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative. COSSA attended the NIFA launch and pressed its new leadership to support the social science research agenda on rural America. The Department of Education continued with the nation’s efforts to reform America’s schools. Part of the Department’s strategy is to place a renewed emphasis on research, data collection, analysis, and dissemination, and what works. The new director of the Institute of Education Sciences, John Easton, came to the COSSA Annual meeting to participate in a panel on what is needed in education research.
In addition, in 2009 the Department and the Coalition for International Education (CIE), to which COSSA belongs, celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the enactment of the National Defense Education Act (albeit a year late) and its Title VI provisions that have provided funding for students to receive exposure to international learning and foreign languages. COSSA was part of the planning committee for the CIE event.
COSSA continued its activities in the Human Subjects protection area in 2009. The Consortium remained a founding member of the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Plans, heard from Jerry Menikoff, head of the Office of Human Research Protection at the Department of Health and Human Services at a COSSA Executive Committee meeting, and consulted with Rep. Diana DeGette’s (D-CO) staff on her legislation regarding this subject.
The Consortium’s commitment to enhancing diversity in science, which flourished with a retreat in 2008, continued in 2009 with a briefing on Capitol Hill and planning for future activities through the COSSA-led Collaboration on Enhancing Diversity in Sciences (CEDS). As always, 2009 saw transitions in the leadership of COSSA’s members, with three new people joining the Executive Committee. On a sad note, COSSA’s first President, Dell Hymes, passed away. On a happier note, COSSA attended the 60th Anniversary celebration of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and the 40th Anniversary celebration of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Late in the year, the Population Association of America, which joined COSSA in 1982 as an Affiliate, voted to elevate its status to Governing Member in 2010.
Howard J. Silver