Citizen Forum on American Science

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the American scientific enterprise faces an inflection point. Longstanding concerns about the ability of federally funded science to deliver social, economic, and security benefits have intensified since 2020, spurring institutional experimentation alongside unprecedented contraction, politicization, changes to both intramural and extramural research, and regulatory rollback. While recent years have seen the creation of new mission-oriented and translational structures, they have also witnessed declining public trust, weakened science advisory capacity, and growing tensions over the goals, governance, and purpose of publicly-funded science. Responses to this moment have fragmented into three broad currents: efforts to restore the pre-2020 status quo, reforms to accelerate commercialization, and emerging calls for deeper systemic redesign. Yet these efforts largely proceed without sustained historical analysis, deliberative public engagement, or coordination across initiatives.

American Science@ 250: Rethink, Reimagine, and Redesign is a national initiative led by Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes (CSPO) to address these gaps. The project moves beyond institutional preservation or incremental reform toward a participatory, historically grounded redesign of the U.S. scientific enterprise. Drawing on more than two decades of CSPO scholarship—including participatory technology assessment, anticipatory governance, and public value mapping—the initiative positions science not as an insulated domain requiring protection from society, but as a civic institution that gains legitimacy and effectiveness through structured engagement with public values and democratic priorities.

More information can be found on CSPO’s website.