Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford

by Rebecca S. Lowen

The "cold war university" is the academic component of the military-industrial-academic complex, and its archetype, according to Rebecca Lowen, is Stanford University. Her book challenges the conventional wisdom that the post-World War II "multiversity" was created by military patrons on the one hand and academic scientists on the other and points instead to the crucial role played by university administrators in making their universities dependent upon military, foundation, and industrial patronage.

Contesting the view that the "federal grant university" originated with the outpouring of federal support for science after the war, Lowen shows how the Depression had put financial pressure on universities and pushed administrators to seek new modes of funding. She also details the ways that Stanford administrators transformed their institution to attract patronage.

With the end of the cold war and the tightening of federal budgets, universities again face pressures not unlike those of the 1930s. Lowen's analysis of how the university became dependent on the State is essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of higher education in the post-cold war era.

Genres: History, Politics, American History, Nonfiction

300 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1997

Reviews

[LT]

Howard August 2022

[Herve · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Creating the Cold War University- The Transformation of Stanford” by Rebecca S. Lowen is an interesting book about how Stanford became wealthy in the 50’s and the 60’s thanks to federal money and industry contracts. Frederick Terman, often credited as being the father of Silicon Valley, called it a “Win-Win-Win” situation. The government funded basic and applied research (the difference between the two was often fuzzy) to develop military applications during the Cold War, the industry developed the products from the results of the research (and did not always have to directly fund the research), and companies like H-P, Varian, GE benefited greatly the effort. Finally Stanford became wealthy as well as excellent in research (which it was not in the 30’s).

Lowen explains that “by 1960, the federal government was spending close to $1B for academic research and university-affiliated research centers, 79 percent of which went to just twenty universities, including Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, MIT, Harvard and the University of Michigan” (page147). In the Shanghai ranking, Harvard is #1, Stanford is #2, Berkeley is #3, MIT is #5, Caltech is #6 and Michigan #18 only.

Money definitely helps. I had however reacted against Alix’ argument as military money can not explain by itself the entrepreneurial spirit that Boston and Silicon Valley developed. Caltech and its JPL laboratory never reached the same start-up activity. But the quality of universities and their wealth is an extremely strong ingredient for successful technology clusters.