Vice President for Academic Affairs

Our concern today with social science and social welfare policy is in keeping with the purposes and conceptions of the founders of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. In those early days these men and women were idealists--they were re-formists, but they also found themselves in an acute state of embarassment. As hu-manitarians, idealists and reformists on the one hand, they were concerned about improving the conditions of society to make life more livable for all the people in the society. On the other hand, they were scientists-even though social scientists-and they felt a mandate from their profession and their disciplines to eschew social reforms. Social science was in the process of becoming more scientific and less social. That required of its practitioners a certain objectivity--a certain dispas-sionate disclaimer of social reform. Social science was concerned with describ-ing and analyzing what is; what was; the causes and consequences, and the para-meters of social behavior. But social science was urged to leave the application of its knowledge and,. indeed, even the implications of its knowledge to others