\n\n\nScientists like to proclaim that science knows no borders. Scientific\n researchers follow the evidence where it leads, their conclusions free \nof prejudice or ideology. But is that really the case? In Freedom\u2019s Laboratory, Audra J. Wolfe shows how these ideas were tested to their limits in the high-stakes propaganda battles of the Cold War.
\nWolfe\n examines the role that scientists, in concert with administrators and \npolicymakers, played in American cultural diplomacy after World War II. \nDuring this period, the engines of US propaganda promoted a vision of \nscience that highlighted empiricism, objectivity, a commitment to pure \nresearch, and internationalism. Working (both overtly and covertly, \nwittingly and unwittingly) with governmental and private organizations, \nscientists attempted to decide what, exactly, they meant when they \nreferred to \u201cscientific freedom\u201d or the \u201cUS ideology.\u201d More frequently, \nhowever, they defined American science merely as the opposite of \nCommunist science.
\nUncovering many startling episodes of the close relationship between the US government and private scientific groups, Freedom\u2019s Laboratory\n is the first work to explore science\u2019s link to US propaganda and \npsychological warfare campaigns during the Cold War. Closing in the \npresent day with a discussion of the recent March for Science and the \nprospects for science and science diplomacy in the Trump era, the book \ndemonstrates the continued hold of Cold War thinking on ideas about \nscience and politics in the United States.
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I 100% believe that the American academy’s reflex of saying that “of course the study of history has nothing to do with lessons for today” was a hysterical Cold War reaction against Marxist historical materialism
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