Council In the News Index

Sen. Kerry: Invest in Education, Infrastructure (Mass High Tech)

Friday, February 18, 2011
By Galen Moore

U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., spoke at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts High Technology Council industry group at the Newton Marriott this morning, advocating for more government investment in infrastructure and education while taking aim at Republicans in the Congress during contentious budget debates.

The council took the opportunity to announce a new initiative at the breakfast, an Innovation Access Network – a digital resource designed to connect companies with public and private sector customers.

Kerry specifically emphasized spending on life sciences, cleantech, communications and transportation infrastructure, education and patent approval. China is spending 9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on infrastructure, he said; Europe, 5 percent; the U.S. is only spending 2 percent.

“Our fight in America has to be not to see everything as spending,” Kerry said, criticizing Republican positions against education and infrastructure spending as “eating our seed corn.” “Investment is not spending,” he said.

Kerry also praised the High Tech Council’s Innovation Access Network – an initiative that council president Christopher Anderson said was conceived in the 2007 military base realignment and closure process. “We were hearing that connections between the tech community and these bases could and should be stronger,” Anderson said.

Outgoing University of Massachusetts president Jack Wilson also spoke at the breakfast, touting UMass’ achievements of the past 10 years, growing its endowment and student enrollment. He also praised increased collaboration among public and private universities in Massachusetts, exemplified by the computing center UMass is helping to build in collaboration with Harvard, MIT and other universities, as well as EMC and Cisco.

But he also called for stronger industry-government collaboration, asking members of the council to push Gov. Deval Patrick to appoint a high-tech industry representative to the board of UMass.

“It is amazing to me that we have some very wonderful trustees at UMass and not a single one of them comes from the high tech industry – one of the most important sectors of our economy,” Wilson said.

The Mass High Tech Council annual meeting also served as the occasion to elect the organization’s officers and board of directors. Confirmed by a brief vote at the meeting were: chairman James Regan of Dynamics Research Corp.; vice chairman Jeff Ray of Dassault Systemes; president Christopher Anderson of the Mass. High Technology Council; and secretary Paul Gauron of Goodwin Procter.