Rice knew that research funding would at least be on the table at budget talks after all, the federal commitment to all sorts of programs was under review. "I was incredibly worried," recalls Provost Condoleezza Rice, whose high-level stints in Washington make her no stranger to the alchemy of policy and politics. Even student aid was singled out as wasteful.Īll this was enough to make Stanford administrators cringe.
Two prominent deficit hawks in the Senate proposed a 60 percent cut in basic Pentagon research, most of which is done on campuses. There was talk of shuttering two Cabinet agencies-Education and Energy-whose support for universities is critical, and of slashing nonmilitary research funding by 35 percent. Their plan called for eliminating $1.5 trillion in red ink by the year 2002.įor higher education, the details were especially unnerving. At the polls in 1994, voters put Republicans in charge of Congress after a GOP campaign to cut federal spending and balance the budget. On the radio, vitriolic talk-show hosts helped to transform "government" into a dirty word. The audience response was a reflection of public skepticism and even hostility to government. But what made the moment unusual was that so many moviegoers cheered wildly at the sight of Washington in flames. That scene from last year's box-office hit Independence Day is typical of Hollywood's penchant for blockbuster pyrotechnics. An alien space ship blows up the White House and destroys the nation's capital.
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