America Is Sacrificing the Future

Writing of The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge by IAS founding Director Abraham Flexner and current Director Robbert Dijkgraaf, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George F. Will observes that the book “read in the right government places, might inoculate the nation against philistine utilitarianism.” Will continues:

“The practical lesson from Flexner’s hymn to impracticality is this: Indifference to immediate usefulness is a luxury central to the mission of some luxuries of our civilization — the great research universities, free from the tyranny of commercial pressures for short-term results. Only government can have the long time horizon required for the basic research that produces, in time, innovations that propel economic growth.”

Read more at the Washington Post.