Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

From Evolution to Immunology: Nature’s Contributors and the Development of a Scientific Journal, 1869-1990"
2014-01-27 00:00 (America/Denver) | CA
AbstractThe British scientific journal Nature, founded in 1869, is now one of the world’s most prestigious scientific publications. This talk examines the ways that contributor interests have influenced Nature’s, development using two episodes from different points in Nature’s history: a debate about evolutionary theory in the 1880s, and a controversy about a provocative immunology paper in the 1980s. A lively 1886 discussion about George J. Romanes’s theory of “physiological selection” illustrates Victorian naturalists’ attachment to Nature as a venue for scientific debates—an attachment that transformed Nature, from a publication aimed at laymen to one written by and for scientific researchers. In 1988, editor John Maddox sought to increase Nature’s, scope by personally visiting the laboratory of Jacques Benveniste, author of a controversial immunology paper, to evaluate the quality of Benveniste’s scientific work. Nature’s, contributors pushed back; they strongly criticized Maddox’s actions and these criticisms influenced Maddox’s future editorial conduct. These episodes illustrate that, far from being a passive or static feature of modern science, scientific journals such as Nature, are dynamic institutions whose development is influenced by the needs and goals of scientific practitioners.

Cancer, Viruses, and the Expanding American State 1946-1982
2014-01-29 00:00
AbstractIn 1964, the National Cancer Institute established the multi-million dollar Special Virus Leukemia Program, which sought to apply the methods of Cold War defense planning to the production of a cancer vaccine. It would, as Life magazine enthused, “do more than hand out money and wait for results…it would plan research and make results.” Remarkably, when the Program was established, no human cancer virus was known to exist! Indeed, from the 1950s through the early 1980s, few areas of biomedical research generated more excitement—or controversy—than the search for a human cancer virus.
In this talk, I examine the history research on the link between viruses and cancer as a unique site for understanding the relationship between the biomedical sciences and the Federal government and how it was redefined in the context of broader debates concerning the role of the state in American society. While the management of cancer research began as the cause of administrators within the National Cancer Institute, it soon provided a focus for a grassroots campaign demanding that the government wage a “War on Cancer” in the late 1960s. The success of this campaign resulted in the dramatic expansion of cancer virus research in the 1970s.
Yet despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars and mobilizing thousands of scientists to study cancer viruses, the National Cancer Institute failed to identify a human cancer virus. While the War on Cancer disappointed activists and administrators alike, it was a boon for academic biologists, who had been among its fiercest critics. Cancer virus research played a critical role in the expansion of molecular biology. Subsequently, the infrastructure created by the state played a critical role in the rise of biotechnology and mobilization against HIV/AIDS.
By following the arc of cancer virus research during these decades, we are able to reflect on the significance of state expansion (and contraction) in the sciences for defining specific regimes of knowledge production, citizenship, and political economy in society at large.

Who Cares About Those Who Care? An Argument and Interaction
2014-01-30 00:00
Prof. Eileen Boris; January 30 at 4 p.m.; McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

Organizing for Economic Democracy
2014-01-31 00:00
UCSB kicks off this year’s Critical Issues in America program with a symposium that looks back at – and forward from – the history of the grassroots War on Poverty to consider its enduring legacy for economic justice organizing today. Panels will bring together historians and activists building on 50 years of organizing for economic justice.
Background
Fifty years ago this month, President Lyndon B. Johnson used his State of the Union Address to ask Congress to join him in fighting an “unconditional war on poverty” through full employment growth, an all-out “assault” on discrimination andinvestments in education, job training, and health care. At the heart of the administration’s program was a bold plan for federal support of locally-organized programs of community action and social welfare provision developed with “maximum feasible participation” from the poor. By offering people a voice in creating local Head Start programs, community health centers, child nutrition, legal services and much more, the Community Action Program changed the dynamic of struggles for access to human services and job opportunities that had been going on for decades, and worked in concert with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to support movements for fair labor standards and workplace democracy.
Speakers include:
Annelise Orleck- Professor of History, Dartmouth College
Pete White- Founder & Co-Director, Los Angeles Community Action Network
Sophia Lee- Professor of Law and History, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Steven Pitts- Associate Chair, UC-Berkeley Labor Center Poverty Law/ Legal Services
Clare Pastore- Professor, USC Gould Law School
José Padilla- Executive Director, California Rural Legal Assistance
See also this UCSB press release about the Organizing for Economic Democracy event.
