David Takeuchi
You may have followed the debate over the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology, or (FIRST) Act, which is currently before the U.S. Congress. The proposed law would cut funding to research in the social sciences, and give politicians more say as to which projects are awarded federal monies. It’s clear that if FIRST does become law, it would be severely detrimental to social work education and research.
BC Social Work’s Associate Dean of Research David Takeuchi has provided an important, public voice against the legislation, penning both an Op Ed in the Boston Globe, and a blog for the London School of Economics. We encourage you to read both of David’s pieces, where he delineates his arguments against FIRST: in short, that, by politicizing research and putting certain fields of science above others, Congress threatens to tarnish a scientific process that has led to solutions to many of the world’s major problems.
Dean Takeuchi is an internationally renowned scholar on health and health disparities, and a recent addition to the Boston College Social Work family. To learn more about his background in research, and what it means to him to be a part of BC’s culture of “novel ideas driven forward by social innovation”, check out this Q&A.
“BC Perspectives” highlights some of the important issues being explored by the Boston College community that reflect the School of Social Work’s commitment to social justice.