Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and Science and Technology Policy
With the Democratic Convention and the Presidential election approaching, it's an opportune time to examine where Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris and Vice Presidential Candidate Governor Tim Walz stand on S&T Policy.
Kamala Harris
Vice President Harris’ mother was a scientist, and her first job was washing pipettes. From an Instagram post:
“My mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a scientist who had two goals in life: to cure breast cancer and to raise her two daughters. As @potus signs a new Executive Order to expand and improve research on women’s health, I am thinking of her.”
Vice President Harris’ mother, with the support of her parents, earned a Ph.D. in nutrition and endocrinology from UC Berkeley. Her research, related to breast cancer research, focused on “the hormone responsiveness of breast tissue.” Sadly, Dr. Gopalan herself died from cancer.
Harris on S&T Policy Issues
Here’s what we know from Vice President Harris's public statements over the past several years.
- Space policy: As chair of the National Space Council, the Vice President “announced commitments to inspire, prepare, and employ the space workforce” and “issued a call to action for both the private and public sectors to bring the benefits of space to communities across our Nation.” (White House 2022, 2024)
- Artificial Intelligence: VP Harris has discussed both the opportunities and challenges of AI:
“AI has the potential to do profound good to develop powerful new medicines to treat and even cure the diseases that have for generations plagued humanity. . . But just as AI has the potential to do profound good, it also has the potential to cause profound harm.”
She subsequently proposed the following protections
(1) “When government agencies use AI tools, we will now require them to verify that those tools do not endanger the rights and safety of the American people.”
(2) “U.S. government agencies [are now required to] publish online a list of their AI systems, an assessment of the risks those systems might pose, and how those risks are being managed.”
(3) “[A]ll federal agencies [are now required] to designate a chief AI officer with the experience, expertise, and authority to oversee all — I’m going to emphasize that — all AI technologies used by that agency.” (White House 2023, 2024)
- Cybersecurity: Vice President Harris supports international collaboration and specifically "the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace –a voluntary commitment to work with the international community to advance cybersecurity and preserve the open, interoperable, secure, and reliable Internet.” (White House, 2021)
- Health Policy: Stat (the best of the health policy newsletters, IMHO) has put together its quick article on healthcare policy, so I defer to them in this regard. They note that she is left of President Biden, supporting Medicare for All before becoming Vice President, and of course, she has been very active in women’s healthcare.
- STEM Education: Education Week (another helpful newsletter) notes that while Senator VP Harris introduced the “The 21st Century STEM for Girls and Underrepresented Minorities Act would have directed the Education Department to provide funding for school districts to cover the costs of STEM education activities for girls and children from racial minorities.” (STEM education was also part of the Space Policy Initiatives mentioned above.)
- Climate Change/Energy: GRIST provides its analysis of VP Harris’ long-term record on climate change and energy technologies:
“As vice president, Harris argued for the allocation of $20 billion for the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, aimed at aiding disadvantaged communities facing climate impacts, and frequently promoted the IRA at events, touting the bill’s investments in clean energy jobs, including installation of energy-efficient lighting, and replacing gas furnaces with electric heat pumps.
She was also the highest-ranking U.S. official to attend the international climate talks at COP28 in Dubai last year, where she announced a U.S. commitment to double energy efficiency and triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. At that same conference, Harris announced a $3 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations adapt to climate challenges.”
- Research: I found this article quite heartening; it is about a two-hour visit the Vice President made to the University of Miami in 2023 to learn more about climate change research and to emphasize its importance to coastal communities. Let’s face it: few VPs have ever spent 2 hours at a university learning about any research topic. Indeed, she could have gotten by with less time if she wanted, so she must have been having fun! So she must like us! Here’s an excerpt from some of her comments at the event
“On the eve of Earth Day, Harris stopped at the Rosenstiel School for about two hours on Friday to learn about some of the cutting-edge climate research happening at the institution.
She chatted with Andrew Baker, a professor of marine biology and ecology, who is leading a massive hybrid coral reef coastline protection project and got a chance to see and hear from graduate students Samantha Medina and Will Downs about the Alfred C. Glassell Jr. SUSTAIN Laboratory, a wind-wave tank that can simulate Category 5 hurricane conditions.”
“The work that’s happening here is a model — not only for our country but around the globe,” Harris said to a crowd of students, faculty members, University trustees, and government leaders. “I want to thank the University for hosting us today and the students for inspiring us. I am counting on your leadership. And I’m counting on you, [graduate student] Aliyah.”
- Scientists: In 2022, Vice President Harris made this statement on her Twitter/X feed
“Dr. Fauci is an incredible public servant whose decades of leadership in science and medicine saved countless lives across the world. Dr. Fauci’s work helped guide our nation through its most challenging public health crises, and I am grateful for his service.”
- And she made this statement on Twitter/X recently
“As Chair of the National Space Council, I join @NASA and people across our nation in celebrating the 55th anniversary of the moon landing. We proudly look to the next generation of scientists, engineers, and explorers to continue this legacy of exploration and innovation.”
Further, she met with young women engineers to support a program to help young professionals at the beginning of her career.
Tim Walz On S&T Policy Issues
I’m also pleased to report that her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, also has an S&T policy background. Not only is his degree in geography, but he has also worked as a geography teacher. According to E&E news
“Walz likes to pair data with geographical information to describe everything from potential climate change impacts of disturbing peat bogs to how best to dole out tax credits to low-income families,”
and according to Fast Company,
“Tim Walz is a map nerd: Harris’s new running mate has been obsessed with mapping software GIS since the early 1990s — and uses maps as a critical governing tool in Minnesota.”
The story is filled with examples. Here’s my favorite that emphasizes the importance of community engagement:
“The state aims to have the lowest rate of childhood poverty in the country. To get there, legislators passed an aggressive new tax credit to give money back to families with children under the age of 18. The law gives a refund even if someone doesn’t owe taxes. But because many of the people who most needed the assistance didn’t have to pay taxes, most weren’t getting the refund.
So Walz’s administration mapped out the neighborhoods they needed to target, and started going door to door and setting up pop-up tax filings at grocery stores. The participation rate quickly jumped to 82%, higher than other programs that had been in place for several years.”
So, the S&T community will likely thrive if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are at the helm of the United States come January 2025.
This article is from my LinkedIn Inform and Influence S&T Policy Newsletter, which serves as a practical guide to the victories and struggles in Science and Technology Policy and how to make a difference. You can subscribe to it on LinkedIn.
