President Neil L. Rudenstine traveled in person last week to Capitol Hill and the White House in an attempt to save government funding to federal research agencies that sponsor university work.

On Rudenstine's agenda was a meeting with six other university presidents and members of the White House staff. He also had a lunch meeting with members of Congress.

A compromise budget bill currently before Congress--which promises less tax cuts than a sweeping Republican measure vetoed recently by President Clinton--still would slash funding for research work in both the sciences and the humanities.

Rudenstine and the other presidents are lobbying against these proposed cuts and pushing instead for an increase in research funding--to come out of the projected budget surplus.

Harvard's government funding comes mainly from federal agencies like

the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA, the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The proposed cuts are part of a budget plan drafted by House and Senate leaders. That plan has already been approved by the House, meaning reductions in funding to all science agencies but the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Senate is currently debating the measure, and is expected to vote on it today.

Five years ago Harvard and a few other universities formed the National Science Coalition to lobby Congress for greater support for university research. Now the science coalition has teamed up with the National Business Coalition for Federal Research, an organization of 32 chambers of commerce which was recently founded to stress the economic benefits of research funding.

Not just biology