Swearing-In Ceremony

Thank you, Secretary Rice, Undersecretary Dobriansky, Dr. Cicerone, I am deeply honored and pleased to have this opportunity to put my lifetime of learning to work here in the Department of State.

There’s an old saying that goes: “give a man a fish and you have fed him for today; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This badly needs updating to the 21^st century. First, we might want to change its take-home lesson to: “teach a man (and…or…a woman, of course) to farm fish in an environmentally sound way.” But then we might also want to add: and help them build not just schools, but universities and research institutes, where their children can absorb mankind’s accumulated knowledge and invent the future.” (admittedly a bit less punchy than the original,but.)

We live in a knowledge age. Everything around us, cars, ATM machines, computers, cell phones  all of contemporary life rests on the rapidly expanding body of human knowledge. Even the ordinary conditions of life that we take for granted in this country: electricity, abundant food, safe drinking water, cavity-free teeth;  the list is endless. All of this rests on knowledge and invention: today we call that knowledge base and the fruits of human invention “science and technology.”

Over the past half a century and more the US has invested heavily in science and has attracted the best and the brightest science and engineering students from around the world. Many of them stayed on to populate our universities and companies and of course to start many, many new enterprises. Their inventiveness at the edge of what Vannevar Bush called “the endless frontier” of science lies behind our unprecedented prosperity.

And yet the landscape is changing rapidly and in many complicated ways, some positive, some negative. But I think there is little doubt that one of the most profound and overarching issues of the 21^st century is posed by the sheer number of us of humans and how our activities are reshaping the planet and its climate. And by this, I don’t mean just climate change. I mean the balance between land for agriculture (whether for food, fiber or biofuels) and the wildlands that shelter what remains of the earth’s biodiversity. I mean the ability of our global travel and shipping systems to propagate diseases of plants, animals and people. I mean the flow of people from poor countries to prosperous countries. I mean….well, you get the picture. Willy nilly, the problems of today and tomorrow are global problems. And addressing them effectively will require all the scientific knowledge and technological sophistication we can muster and more.

So what is it that science and technology can do in the framework of international diplomacy and what can’t they do? Science…and scientists are good at figuring out how things work, gathering information, and converting information to knowledge. Technology and its practitioners are about inventing and devising new and for the most part either more efficient or better….ways of doing things. Scientists are even pretty good in some situations, very good at predicting the future course of events.

But scientific knowledge and scientific predictions cannot tell us what we should do. Sure. In some cases, it’s obvious and enough to know the facts to know what you should do. If an atmospheric scientist tells you that a tornado is heading straight for your house, it isn’t hard to figure out that hanging around on the porch isn’t the best course of action. But more often than not, knowing the facts and figures is only part, albeit an essential part of the decision-making process, whether in short term crisis management or in long term policy development.

My job, the job of my office, is to serve all of you. Our door is aways open well, almost always (we do abide by the security rules). We don’t promise to know everything. We do promise to do our utmost to connect you as quickly and efficiently as we can with the science and scientists, the technology and technologists you need to know to best inform your decision-making processes. Across the street from the State Department is the headquarters of the National Academy of Science, the Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Engineering, the nexus of some of the best minds in the world. Dr. Cicerone’s presence here today is an important indicator of the broader scientific and engineering communities’ interest and support, as well.

We have no wish to compete with the many competent scientists already at work in the State Department: the challenges are vast and our total numbers are small. Our objective is to cooperate, collaborate and support you wherever we can.

So I would like to take this opportunity to draw attention to two resources available to all of you in the Department of State. These are the AAAS fellows and the Jefferson fellows. We are the virtual (and sometimes the actual) home of this extraordinary cadre of scientists within the State Department.

AAAS fellows are commonly, but not always, fresh out of their PhD or postdoctoral research. They’re highly skilled in contemporary analytical methods. Just to give you one example, on Thursday, I met AAAS fellow geologist Jordan Muller, who is working in the Humanitarian Issues Unit of INR. He has developed an automated system that alerts the relevant embassy or embassies instantly when data from the US Geological Survey’s global seismic monitoring system suggests a significant chance of a tsunami in a highly populated area. Wow!

Jefferson fellows are tenured science faculty from universities who come to the State Department for a year’s active service. Returning to their own institutions, they remain available in a consulting capacity for an additional 5 years. One of the 2006 Jefferson fellows is Osama Awadelkarim, a Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Penn State, and a nanotechnology expert. He is a native of Sudan and has a passionate interest in building African scientific and technological capacity. Traveling to several African countries during his year in the State Department, Osama concludes that Africa’s increased interest in science and technology presents a unique opportunity for US diplomacy.

And that brings me to the last point I would like to make. I took this job because it has been my experience that scientists can talk and work across seemingly insurmountable political and religious divides. Many credit the close working relationships between US and USSR physicists for helping to keep the cold war from flashing over.

As a native Russian speaker, I came to know and admire a number of excellent Soviet biologists who worked in virtual isolation from their counterparts in other countries because they could rarely get out and although unimaginable today, there was no email. Later, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, I had the opportunity to help some of them maintain their scientific research programs first as a member of the founding board of the International Science Foundation funded by George Soros and later, as a reviewer for the Howard Hughes programs in support of science in the former Soviet Union.

Today, the focus of extreme political tension has shifted to the Middle East. Despite deep political differences, there are small, but heartening examples of scientists working together. One is Bridging the Rift Foundation, which brings together scientists from Israel, Jordan and the US. They will eventually to be co-located in a research facility that literally spans the Jordanian-Israeli border to train and work together on the biology of organisms that live in one of the hottest and most arid climates on earth. This is surely a relevant undertaking in the light of a changing global climate. Stanford ecologist Hal Mooney comments: "It was exciting seeing the Israeli and Jordanian scientists interact…..” and says further that “…science is an important instrument for peace, because scientists speak a universal language."

Madame Secretary, please make use of us in your transformational diplomacy efforts. Not just of science and technology, but of the people, the scientists, mathematicians, and engineers who speak this universal language – or, more accurately, languages, given the disciplinary dialects. We constitute an underutilized source of man- and woman-power uniquely able to help build the educational and research capabilities of less developed countries so essential to powering their future stability and prosperity.

Thank you.