Elections in the U.S. are coming soon. And, most scientists that I know (especially academics), are really leery of getting involved with politics. This is true despite the reality that politics massively influence who gets to study and do science, what kind of research gets funded, who gets hired to do it/teach it at universities, and what capacity and willingness those universities have to support said research and researchers.
We need to shake loose of this avoidance. Universities are actually well-positioned to help us do so.
Earlier this semester, I and several other faculty from my department participated in a represent-the-department event where we socialized with state lawmakers, top-level administrators at the university, and alumni/donors. We were a small group of faculty in a sea of folks who knew the ropes of these kinds of events. We were shepherded about by staff who were so smooth (in a good way!) that they appeared capable of doing this level of casual-yet-high-stakes mingling in their sleep.
As I've mentioned before, I'm a first-gen student and a first-gen academic. I did not grow up in an environment where the future of the university might get decided over popcorn and hot dogs by people carefully dressed in their casual best.
But, I'm actually fairly comfortable at these events because I did grow up code-switching between segments of my family with wildly different perspectives on what a well-behaved little girl looked like, did, and said. I also started working in high-end, non-profit environments in high school and continued to work in these settings through my undergrad. I was "the help" in most of these jobs, but that exposure taught me important things about how to relate to, interact with, entertain, and make requests of people who seem to have the keys to the castles.
As my career progressed, I came to work more often with (rather than just for) folks who had access to or influence in these arenas. At the same time, I was increasingly interacting with scientists and academics whose work could genuinely help with or benefit from connecting to people with influence and disposable income/assets.
But, I continue to frequently observe a deep reticence, if not outright avoidance, of these professional-social environs among many scientists (in all career stages and job types). There are persistent notions, of course, that scientists need to be neutral, and that scientists (especially academics) can be [1]. These ideas dominate despite evidence that pretending to be neutral is actually counterproductive when we're sharing science beyond the academy [2].
What we get is a population of people who spend their careers trying to advance knowledge (usually for the sake of making something better in the world). But, so many of my fellow faculty remain quite ineffective at getting decision-makers and private/corporate funders to see value in their work.
"What we have here is a failure to communicate" [3].
This quote from the film Cool Hand Luke itself seems apt. But the stalemate reflected by it also has grim parallels for us in the academy. We're going to keep losing if we doggedly refuse to learn to communicate with the power brokers who decide if and how science is used, and if and how higher education receives public funding.
So, even though faculty are genuinely swamped, I assert that we need to take the time to pivot away from the attitudes and conditioning that get us into this predicament and keep us there. We're not going to get more office-level admin support, or lower teaching loads, or higher state-funded wages for grad students if the people with three phones in their pocket don't think what we do matters.
That's why I think we need to expand what we expect of faculty, so that they (ahem, we) can actually be the kind of professionals higher ed needs.
How do we do that?
We don't just scold people.
We build systems that support growth, and as much as possible, accountability around how that growth is going to happen. Because, let's be real: there aren't a lot of incentives for sharing science [4], let alone getting better at it. In fact, at my university, tenure-track faculty aren't even allowed to have professional development in their job descriptions.
Personally, I'd like to see us massively overhaul the incentives and expectations for academics to foster more engagement beyond the academy. But, that change is a long game. In the meantime, we still have work we can do together, potentially without even pushing us all further into burnout!
In broad strokes, here's what I think we could do [5]:
Provide training for all employee types in the governance structures of the university, the ways that resources are allocated, etc.
For example, in far too many instances, I hear departments focus primarily on the research foci they want in their next hires while utterly failing to account for the reality that TA/GA allocations, allocation of new hires, investments and upgrades in research facilities and department buildings, etc., all hinge on the number of graduates in undergraduate programs.
At the same time, most lawmakers and many donors (who are frequently undergrad alumni) care more about undergraduate programing and may even struggle to understand or actively oppose the research agendas of individual faculty or departments.
Building institutional "literacy" regarding the management of the university and the role individual faculty can play could make a positive, meaningful difference in everyone's expectations and ability to influence decisions.
Build two threads into our grad programming and create an intensive onboarding process for new faculty and staff.
The first thread would leverage the myriad existing programs that help early career scientists understand the realities of local, regional, and national politics. These include programs from AAAS, Wilburforce Foundation, and many others. We can either partner with these entities to offer dedicated program at our universities, or we can allocate funding to send cohorts from our universities to attend these programs. The more we invest here, the quicker we can scale up to a lot of folks on campus having real capacity for this work.
The second would be a campus-based leadership/etiquette program that melds threads of Toastmasters/improv speaking practice with coaching on how to eat in "fancy" settings (think use of a range of flatware, talking while juggling appetizers, etc.), and the careful finesse of shoulder-rubbing that initiates or sustains relationships with powerbrokers whether you politically agree or not. This finesse requires things like: introducing ourselves in ways that don't bore people or seem overly nerdy/superior, but more importantly open the door to continuing conversation; understanding and relating to the often-working-class backgrounds of state lawmakers; county-specific knowledge of the needs and challenges of the state; and practice at connecting our research and teaching to these priorities.
Offer regular, state-level policy briefings and clinics on specific topics that lawmakers and influential folks (think big donors, top-level university admin, etc.) care about/support and the topics they actively oppose.
There should be a special emphasis here on (truthfully but strategically) framing the work of individual faculty, their departments, and the university as directly, vitally important to the success of the things these powerbrokers care about.
Provide regular opportunities to practice navigating conversations around these shared and seemingly opposing values. (Improv/stand-up comedy training can offer a lot here.)
Develop a coordinated program of connecting faculty and students who have completed this training to the people who have the power to support or undercut the work of individual researchers/departments and/or the university at large.
Is all of this somewhat idealistic? Does it sound exhausting?
Fair, fair.
But the reality is that these mismatches in expectations and communication are happening every day. And, they are hamstringing our ability to connect decision-makers with the knowledge that we spend our days (and careers!) uncovering. This is knowledge that could (and does!) help the world be a better place...when we actually connect it to people who care and can use it in ways that respect their values and positioning.
How about you?
Have you had an experience trying to get a lawmaker or administrator to care about your work? How did it go? How well-prepared did you feel for that situation? What kind of support do you think would have helped it go better? What kind of support would you want now, to keep trying to make these connections happen?
NOTES
[1] But, here's what I think of the façade of neutrality in science, in academic writing, and in the academy more broadly. (Spoiler alert: it ain't possible, and we shouldn't pretend it is, nor should we frame it as an ideal to strive toward.)
[2] Here are a couple of papers as a starting point. If you want to dig into this deeper, see my scicomm bibliography. (As always, let me know if you run into a paywall and can't access papers I recommend. I'll happily send you a PDF for free.)
Donner, S.D. 2015. Finding your place on the science-advocacy continuum: an editorial essay. Climatic Change 124:1-8. Doi: 10.1007/s10584-014-1108-1
Kotcher, J.E., T.A. Myers, E.K. Vraga, N. Stenhouse, and E.W. Maibach. 2017. Does engagement in advocacy hurt the credibility of scientists? Results from a randomized national survey experiment. Environmental Communication 11(3): 415-429. doi: 10.1080/17524032.2016.1275736.
[3] My dad will be so thrilled that I've managed to reference one of his all-time favorite (and frequently relevant) movie quotes. Heads up that the link goes to a clip from the movie Cool Hand Luke; in this clip, Paul Newman is being brutalized while imprisoned. It's not a feel-good scene.
[4] In fact, as collaborators and I recently published, the academy is set up to actively oppose scicomm. See our paper here (and let me know if you need a PDF to avoid the paywall).
Broder, E.D.♦, B.G. Merkle♦, M. Balgopal, E. Weigel, S. Murphy, J.J. Caffrey, E. Hebets, A. Sher, J. Gumm, J. Lee, C. Schell, and R. Tinghitella♦. 2024. Use your power for good: An applied framework for overcoming institutional injustices impeding SciComm in the academy. BioScience, in press. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae080
[5] If anyone has funding for this, I'd LOVE to real-talk about how to build training programs that would actually, genuinely prep faculty, grad students, and early career science professionals to feel comfortable connecting with folks who have real influence on our individual and collective futures.
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