An MIT Alumni Association Publication

Hockfield On Point: Can Innovation Fuel Economic Recovery?

  • Nancy DuVergne Smith
  • slice.mit.edu
  • 1
Can science dig America out of the current financial slump? Tom Ashbrook, host of the National Public Radio program On Point, interviewed MIT President Susan Hockfield to find out. The January 6 program, “Innovation, Science, and the Next American Breakthroughs,” also included comments from editors of Scientific American and Popular Science.

President Susan Hockfield interviewed at the WBUR studios. Photo: courtesy WBUR Jesse Costa

Ashbrook tapped Hockfield, on the eve of MIT’s sesquicentennial celebrations, as leader of “an American innovation machine that was founded by a Southern in New England two days before the Civil War.” Hockfield said that the Institute’s commitment to using innovation to improve the economic climate began when William Barton Rogers founded MIT to accelerate the industrial revolution in America.

Hockfield’s answer to the central question was direct: “I think science is up to the challenge, I think the people of the United States are up to the challenge—our great question right now is whether Congress is up to the challenge,” Hockfield said.

“One of our concerns is that the enthusiasm for decreasing the deficit would cut the kind of seed corn that we rely on to actually grow our economy,” Hockfield said. “At the time the United States is reducing its investments, other countries are racing to try and repeat the miracle that was the American innovation-based economy following World War II.”

Go to the On Point episode, and click on “Listen to This Show” to hear the 46-minute broadcast.

Comments

brett

Wed, 01/12/2011 9:07am

broadcast is amazing, I loved it