I n an era of fake news, partisan deadlock, and rising ideological hysteria on both ends of the American political spectrum, public universities are uniquely positioned to promote rational, evidence-based governance. Scholars have the long and broad view devoted to the pursuit of knowledge that policy makers and the public can’t get elsewhere.
But unfortunately for both American public higher education and society, we have systematically failed to engage the public-policy conversation effectively. We need to fix this.
Universities are repositories of a long history of human intellectual development, filled with well-trained experts on virtually every public problem that policy makers face. Furthermore, this knowledge has been paid for in large part by public funds, one way or another. We have an obligation to give the public a return on its investment.
If scholars don’t contribute their informed, disinterested perspectives, others will happily fill the gap. But these other voices also bring an interest in policy outcomes, whether partisan, ideological, or economic. As scholars, our interest is the truth. Now, I’m not so naïve as to believe that academics have no self-interest in public policy (in fact, my call for action is itself promotional) or that we have a monopoly on truth. Far from it. But certainly we know much that is not common currency in the policy conversation, but should be.
If scholars don’t contribute their informed, disinterested perspectives, others will happily fill the gap.
If we isolate ourselves in our labs and offices, both higher education and society suffer. If we aren’t part of the policy conversation, if we aren’t seen as contributing broadly to the public good, policy makers and taxpayers will continue to see higher education as merely a private good and support it as such. By participating in the policy conversation, scholars can generate a very visible public good.
So, why don’t we? There are three basic reasons.
First, we are leery of making strong claims. As good methodologists, we avoid sweeping statements of fact, with due deference to the vagaries of empirical research, changing circumstances, and the complexity of the world. There should be proper skepticism about the results of individual studies, and large holes exist in our knowledge. But just because we don’t know everything doesn’t mean we know nothing. It doesn’t mean that we can’t make a valuable and unique contribution to the discussion.
We can be reasonably confident about knowledge in our respective fields, particularly where there is some level of consensus. Focused primarily on cutting-edge research, we often take for granted these areas of consensus — except perhaps when teaching undergraduates. Indeed, this is exactly what we do teach our students. And the public, the media, and policy makers could benefit enormously from much of this baseline information. This knowledge-based information would be much more helpful to a journalist or policy maker than would the average academic journal article.
Let me be clear: We don’t need to be TV talking heads making categorical statements on the fly, but we should rightly feel some intellectual confidence from our years of education, research, and teaching on a subject. We are experts in our fields, and we need to own that.
Second, we have a translation problem. Among the distinguishing characteristics of academic communication are the use of jargon, the assumption of tremendous audience background knowledge, and an awkward pride in the obtuseness of our prose and speech. Some of this is because our professional focus is often on third- order research problems, as is appropriate in the pursuit of science. We focus on what those outside our fields see as minutiae, which also can make our scholarship incomprehensible to nonspecialists.
But we aren’t always obtuse. In the classroom, especially with undergraduates, each of us adapts our communication style and content to people who are not so well versed in our jargon and assumptions. So with some effort, we could also do this for audiences off campus.
Third, we lack incentives. As scholars, we have virtually no professional reason to reach beyond the walls of academe. Generally, we get hired, promoted, tenured, and otherwise rewarded based on our scholarship. We also must teach at least passably well. But the third leg of the tenure-and-promotion stool — service — is far less important. I recently asked a new chancellor at a research-intensive university what I thought was a rhetorical question: Had he ever denied tenure or promotion solely on the basis of lack of service? To my great surprise, he told me that he had. Silently, I assumed he was lying.
In the social sciences, if your teaching and scholarship are adequate for whatever step on the personnel ladder you are facing, you will advance. Adequate service might consist of a couple of on-campus committee assignments and reviewing a few journal submissions. As such, most scholars have no incentive to involve themselves in their communities professionally. And those who are drawn to this work out of personal interest may even be actively discouraged from “wasting their time” writing an op-ed or speaking to the Kiwanis Club.
U niversities can and should address the translation and incentives problems. Workshops on how to work with the press, write for general audiences, testify before policy makers, or speak to civic groups can be sponsored, and should be actively promoted. Most universities have units that link professors to the media, and those units can be beefed up in terms of skill development and activity levels. As for incentives, establishing service requirements with bite could help. But perhaps not every scholar can or should be talking to the press and policy makers, so such requirements for service could become watered down in the end, as they are now.
But to be most effective in generating high-quality public engagement, university administrators should think about ways to offer scholars their most valuable commodity — time. Typically, faculty members must sacrifice either research time or personal time to engage the public. While some might sacrifice research for engagement, these may not be those we want out in the community. And we can’t rely on scholars sacrificing their personal time, for a whole host of reasons.
However, professors might be willing to sacrifice a class to contribute to their expertise to the national conversation. Some sort of course-release arrangement is the best way to encourage and help scholars conduct sustained, informed public engagement. Of course, such an arrangement would have to be monitored closely to ensure that the university is getting its money’s worth. But, along with a bit of training and staff support, through this approach a university can enhance its public profile through its best asset — its faculty.
In the end, those of us in academe have a moral obligation to give society a broader return on its investments in higher education, just as we have a self-interest and an institutional interest in doing so. With more encouragement, and with scholars reconceiving public engagement as another teaching opportunity, we can and should do better.
Christopher Z. Mooney is a professor of state politics at the University of Illinois at Springfield and at the university’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs.
