In his fourteen years as president of MIT, Charles Vest workedcontinuously to realize his vision of rebuilding America’s trust in science andtechnology. In a time when the federal government dramatically reduced its fundingof academic research programs and industry shifted its R&D resources into theshort-term product-development process, Vest called for new partnerships withbusiness and government. He called for universities to meet the intellectualchallenges posed by the innovation-driven, globally connected needs of industry evenas he reaffirmed basic academic values and the continuing need for longer-termscientific inquiry.In Pursuing the Endless Frontier, Vest addresses these and otherissues in a series of essays written during his tenure as president of MIT. Hediscusses the research university’s need to shift to a broader, more internationaloutlook, the value of diversity in the academic community, the greater leadershiprole for faculty outside the classroom, and the boundless opportunity of newscientific and technological developments even when coupled with financialconstraints. In the provocative essay What We Don’t Know, Vest reminds us of whathe calls the most critical point of all, that science is driven by a deep humanneed to understand nature, to answer the big questions – that what we don’t knowis more important than what we do. In another essay, on the future of MIT, hecelebrates MIT’s strengths as being extraordinarily well-suited to the needs of anera of unprecedented change in science and technology. In Disturbing theEducational Universe: Universities in the Digital Age – Dinosaurs or Prometheans, he describes MIT’s innovative OpenCourseWare initiative, which builds on thefundamental nature of the Internet as an enabling and liberating technology.Vest, who is stepping down from MIT’s presidency in the fall of 2004, writes with clarityand insight about the issues facing academic institutions in the twenty-firstcentury. His essays in Pursuing the Endless Frontier offer inspiration to educatorsand researchers seeking the way forward.
