This year marks the 50th Anniversary Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I have a Dream” speech.

However, Brown University student Suzanne Enzerink recounts another intriguing but relatively unknown event that occurred 50 years ago.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of an obscure milestone in the Cold War. On Sept. 20, 1963, in a speech to the United Nations, President John F. Kennedy P’83 proposed a joint lunar mission with the Soviet Union. The man who had ascended to his Camelot on the platform of the space race then suggested far-reaching cooperation with the U.S.’ main nemesis, a country it had been pitted against for the allegiance of the Third World ever since 1945.

Unlike land, “(s)pace offers no problem of sovereignty,” Kennedy remarked. “Why, therefore, should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition?”Fifty years later, even in the absence of a militarized conflict of ideologies, this spirit of international cooperation to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge has been lost entirely. All areas of life, material and immaterial, are now defined in terms of ownership and monetary value. Putting national interest first stifles innovation and development, and a constant cost-benefit analysis precludes true experiments of thought and production. It would serve us well to take the conciliatory sentiments and the willingness to take risks of 1963 as a blueprint for new cooperation between rivals, whether they be domestic or foreign. Under the nomer of protectionism, countries, and by extension, their universities, are harming their knowledge economies more than aiding it.

Take academia and research. In the 1960s, it cost the United States 50 cents per American per week to fund the Apollo project, and in later years, critics condemned the billion-dollar launch that did not bring the nation any monetary gain. The scientific advancements that stem from research as part of the lunar project are often disregarded. In other words, the end product is seen as more important than the process. The space effort, as Kennedy acknowledged, was largely “an act of faith and vision,” an experiment in thought, technology and innovation without any certain benefits.

…..We can all play our part. Kennedy’s example shows the importance of an individual’s willingness to cooperate. Many years later, Khrushchev’s son Sergei revealed that the Soviet chairman had decided to accept the president’s offer after several weeks of contemplation. It was not to be. Before Khrushchev and Kennedy had the chance to make concrete plans for cooperation, Kennedy embarked on his fateful trip to Dallas, TX. His successor Lyndon Johnson discontinued the conciliatory efforts, and the Cold War continued to dominate global policy for twenty-five more years. Cooperation cannot just be the vision of one man in order to succeed. It has to be the norm of all individuals, a standard to aspire to. Only when the “I” and the “you,” the “us” and the “them,” disappear will innovation reach its full potential.