Rush Holt is a Former Member of Congress (NJ-12, 1999-2015) and CEO-Emeritus of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), physicist, advocate for science and the environment, and five-time Jeopardy! winner.

Vannevar Bush famously wrote that without scientific progress “no amount of achievement in other directions can ensure our health, prosperity, and security.”

With the current great disruptions there is unsatisfactory scientific progress in several important respects. Even more important than the losses in research funding and the cancellation of many university programs is the expulsion of science from governmental, social, and cultural areas. Evidence, scientific expertise, and collaborative questioning of the unknown are being replaced with unmoored opinions. We risk descending into what Cornell’s Carl Sagan called a demon-haunted world. Is there something the non-scientific public should get from science that is more important than the medicines, materials, and munitions that Bush imagined?

Talk followed by a panel discussion with:

Lisa Kaltenegger (Director Carl Sagan Institute)

Praveen Sethupathy (Co-chair Committee on the Future of the American University)

Chris Smart (Goichman Family Director, Cornell AgriTech)

Co-Sponsors: West Campus House System, Center for Global Democracy, Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, Carl Sagan Institute, Committee on the Future of the American University

The Sevin Seminar on American Political Values brings distinguished individuals and prominent figures in the area of American Politics, such as a politician, professor, author, journalist, political analyst, etc., to share insights on the subject of American political values and ideals. Cornell alumnus Irik Sevin '69 endowed the Sevin Fellowships to the West Campus House System program in honor of late ILR Professor Milton Konvitz, a revered Cornell professor.