tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/us-academia-32357/articlesUS academia – The Conversation2023-06-06T12:31:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1966912023-06-06T12:31:12Z2023-06-06T12:31:12ZScientists’ political donations reflect polarization in academia – with implications for the public’s trust in science<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530181/original/file-20230605-25-5v5b99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=175%2C143%2C3722%2C2746&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Under 10% of political donations from academic scholars go to Republican causes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/political-contributions-super-pacs-and-political-royalty-free-image/1321234653">Douglas Rissing/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>People who lean left politically reported an <a href="https://apnorc.org/projects/amidst-the-pandemic-confidence-in-the-scientific-community-becomes-increasingly-polarized/">increase in trust in scientists</a> during the COVID-19 pandemic, while those who lean right politically reported much lower levels of trust in scientists. This polarization around scientific issues – from COVID-19 to climate change to evolution – is at its peak since surveys started tracking this question over 50 years ago.</p>
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<p>Surveys reveal that people with more education are <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/">more ideologically liberal</a>. And academia has been gradually turning left over the past 40 years. Scientists – the people who produce scientific knowledge – are widely perceived to be on the opposite side of the political spectrum from those who trust science the least. This disparity poses a challenge when communicating important science to the public.</p>
<p>In a recent study, science historian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UK9sjJMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Naomi Oreskes</a>, environmental social scientist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=e138rTwAAAAJ&hl=en">Viktoria Cologna</a>, literary critic <a href="https://www.charlietyson.com/">Charlie Tyson</a> <a href="https://www.kaurov.org">and I</a> leveraged public data sets <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01382-3">to explore the dynamics of scientists’ political leanings</a>. Our analysis of individual political donations confirms that the vast majority of scientists who contribute have supported Democratic candidates. But we contend that this fact doesn’t need to short-circuit effective science communication to the public.</p>
<h2>Digging into individuals’ political donations</h2>
<p>In the United States, all donations to political parties and campaigns must be reported to the Federal Election Committee. That information is <a href="https://www.fec.gov/">published by the FEC on its website</a>, along with the donation amount and date; the donor’s name, address and occupation; and the recipient’s party affiliation. This data allowed us to examine millions of transactions made in the past 40 years.</p>
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<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01382-3">In our study</a>, we examined researchers in academia, specifically people with titles like “professor,” “faculty,” “scientist” and “lecturer,” as well as scientists in the energy sector. We conducted this analysis by identifying 100,000 scientists based on their self-reported occupation and cross-referencing them with the <a href="https://www.scopus.com/">Elsevier’s Scopus database</a>, which contains information on researchers and their scientific publications. The findings of our study indicate a gradual shift away from the Republican Party among American researchers, both in academia and the industry.</p>
<p>Overall support of the Republican Party, in terms of individual donations from the general public, has slid down over the past 40 years. But this trend is much steeper for scientists and academics than for the overall U.S. population. By 2022, it was hard to find an academic supporting the Republican Party financially, even at <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3/figures/1">Christian colleges and universities</a>. The trend also persists <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3/figures/3">across academic disciplines</a>.</p>
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<p>Notably, scientists working at fossil fuel companies have also become more liberal, while their management has remained conservative, based on both groups’ political donations. We suspect this buildup of political polarization within companies may at some point intensify the public conversation about climate change.</p>
<h2>Who shares science messages</h2>
<p>People tend to accept and internalize information delivered by someone they consider trustworthy. Communication scholars call this the “<a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/finding_the_right_messenger_for_your_message">trusted messenger</a>” effect. Various factors like socioeconomic status, race and, increasingly, political leanings influence this perceived credibility.</p>
<p>Science communication gets stalled because of what appears to be a positive feedback loop: The more liberal academia gets, the fewer “trusted messengers” can communicate with the half of the U.S. that leans right. Trust in science and scientific institutions among Republicans declines and it gets reflected in their policies; academia, in response, leans even more left.</p>
<p>The increased clustering of scientists away from Republicans risks further damaging conservative Republicans’ trust in science. But we contend there are ways to break out of this loop.</p>
<p>First, academia is not a monolith. While our study may suggest that all academics are liberal, it is important to admit that the data we analyzed – political donations – is only a proxy for what people actually think. We don’t capture every scientist with this method since not everyone donates to political campaigns. In fact, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/05/17/5-facts-about-u-s-political-donations/">most people don’t donate to any candidate at all</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/31449">According to</a> <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-politics-and-religion/">surveys</a>, many academics have traditionally considered themselves moderate. The question, then, is how to communicate to the public the diversity of political views in academia, given the degree of current polarization, and how to elevate these other voices.</p>
<p>Second, the evident left leaning of academia <a href="https://social-epistemology.com/2020/08/07/the-american-university-the-politics-of-professors-and-the-narrative-of-liberal-bias-charlie-tyson-and-naomi-oreskes/">is not necessarily proof of a “liberal bias</a>” that <a href="https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/">some people worry is corrupting research</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X14000430">impeding the pursuit of truth</a>. Overall, higher education does appear to have a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/">liberalizing effect on social and political views</a>, but universities also play an important role in the formation of <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691163666/becoming-right">political identity for</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-020-09446-z">young conservatives</a>.</p>
<p>We believe that clear data about academia’s left-leaning orientation, as well as understanding the underlying reasons for it, could help interrupt the feedback loop of declining scientific trust.</p>
<p>For now there’s a shortage of centrist and conservative scientists serving as trusted messengers. By engaging in public conversation, these scientists could offer visible alternatives to the anti-scientific stances of Republican elites, while at the same time showing that the scientific world is not homogeneous.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Kaurov receives funding from Harvard University. </span></em></p>Public data about individual donors’ political contributions supports the perception that American academia leans left.Alexander Kaurov, Research Associate in History of Science, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2008722023-03-30T12:26:49Z2023-03-30T12:26:49ZAs the global musical phenomenon turns 50, a hip-hop professor explains what the word ‘dope’ means to him<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518206/original/file-20230329-20-e8rkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C283%2C5082%2C3120&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hip-hop culture brought graffiti art, breakdancing, emceeing and DJing to prominence.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/april-1984-new-york-brooklyn-break-dancers-photo-by-michael-news-photo/74255222?adppopup=true">Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After I finished my Ph.D. in 2017, several newspaper reporters wrote about the job I’d accepted at the University of Virginia as an assistant professor of hip-hop.</p>
<p>“A.D. Carson just scored, arguably, the dopest job ever,” one <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/03/virginia-ad-carson-hip-hop-professor/435032001/">journalist wrote</a>.</p>
<p>The writer may not have meant it the way I read it, but the terminology was significant to me. Hip-hop’s early luminaries transformed the word’s original meanings, using it as a synonym for cool. In the 50 years since, it endures as an expression of respect and praise – and illegal substances.</p>
<p>In that context, dope has everything to do with my work. </p>
<p>In the year I graduated from college, one of my best friends was sent to federal prison for possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute. He served nearly a decade and has been back in prison several times since.</p>
<p>But before he went to prison, he helped me finish school by paying off my tuition.</p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3235103611/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1170700975/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/owning-my-masters-the-rhetorics-of-rhymes-revolutions">Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions by A.D. Carson</a></iframe>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">‘80’s’ is a song from the author’s dissertation album that describes his conception of ‘dopeness.’</span></figcaption></figure>
<p>In a very real way, dope has as much to do with me finishing my studies and becoming a professor as it does with him serving time in a federal prison.</p>
<h2>Academic dope</h2>
<p>For my Ph.D. dissertation in Rhetorics, Communications, and Information Design, I wrote a <a href="http://phd.aydeethegreat.com">rap album</a> titled “Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions.” A peer-reviewed, mastered version of the album is due out this summer from University of Michigan Press. </p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1863704334/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=3574551506/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/sleepwalking-vol-1-a-mixtape">Sleepwalking, Vol. 1: A Mixtape by A.D. Carson</a></iframe>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">‘The Defense’ describes the composition of the author’s dissertation album and his dissertation defense.</span></figcaption></figure>
<p>Part of my reasoning for writing it that way involved my ideas about dope. I want to question who gets to determine who and what are dope and whether any university can produce expertise on the people who created hip-hop.</p>
<p>While I was initially met with <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/04/clemson-university-arrests/478455/">considerable resistance</a> for my work at Clemson, the university eventually became supportive and touted “<a href="https://news.clemson.edu/clemson-doctoral-student-produces-rap-album-for-dissertation-it-goes-viral/">a dissertation with a beat</a>.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"845990987440652289"}"></div></p>
<p>Clemson is not the only school to recognize hip-hop as dope. </p>
<p>In the 50 years since its start at <a href="https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-holiday-signals-a-turning-point-in-education-for-a-music-form-that-began-at-a-back-to-school-party-in-the-bronx-165525">a back-to-school party</a> in the South Bronx, hip-hop, the culture and its art forms have come a long way to a place of relative prominence in educational institutions. </p>
<p>Since 2013, Harvard University has housed the <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/institutes/hiphop-archive-research-institute">Hiphop Archive & Research Institute</a> and the <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/faq/nasir-jones-hiphop-fellowship">Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship</a> that funds scholars and artists who demonstrate “exceptional scholarship and creativity in the arts in connection with Hiphop.”</p>
<p>UCLA announced an <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2022-03-28/ucla-hip-hop-initiative-chuck-d">ambitious Hip Hop Initiative</a> to kick off the golden anniversary. The initiative includes artist residencies, community engagement programs, a book series and a digital archive project.</p>
<p>Perhaps my receiving tenure and promotion at the University of Virginia is part of the school’s attempt to help codify the existence of hip-hop scholarship. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1628022074752090112"}"></div></p>
<p>When I write about “dope,” I’m thinking of Black people like drugs to which the U.S. is addicted. </p>
<p>Dope is a frame to help clarify the attempts, throughout American history, at outlawing and <a href="https://www.ilsos.gov/departments/archives/online_exhibits/100_documents/1853-black-law.html">legalizing</a> the presence of Black people and Black culture. As dope, Black people are America’s constant ailment and cure.</p>
<p>To me, dope is an aspiration and a methodology to acknowledge and resist America’s steady surveillance, scrutiny and criminalization of Blackness.</p>
<p>By this definition, dope is not only what we are, it’s also who we want to be and how we demonstrate our being. </p>
<p>Dope is about what we can make with what we are given. </p>
<p>Dope is a product of conditions created by America. It is also a product that helped create America.</p>
<p>Whenever Blackness has been seen as lucrative, businesses like record companies and institutions like colleges and universities have sought to capitalize. To remove the negative stigmas associated with dope, these institutions cast themselves in roles similar to a pharmacy. </p>
<p>Even though I don’t believe academia has the power or authority to bestow hip-hop credibility, a question remains – does having a Ph.D and producing rap music as <a href="https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-professor-looks-to-open-doors-with-worlds-first-peer-reviewed-rap-album-153761">peer-reviewed publications</a> change my dopeness in some way?</p>
<h2>Legalizing dope</h2>
<p>Though I earned a Ph.D by rapping, my own relationship to hip-hop in academic institutions remains fraught. </p>
<p>Part of the problem was noted in 2014 by Michelle Alexander, a legal scholar and author of “<a href="http://newjimcrow.com/">The New Jim Crow</a>,” when she talked about <a href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/resource/new-jim-crow-whats-next-talk-michelle-alexander-and-dpas-asha-bandele">her concerns about</a> the legalization of marijuana in different U.S. states.</p>
<p>“In many ways the imagery doesn’t sit right,” she said. “Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses … after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?”</p>
<p>I feel the same way about dopeness in academia. Since hip-hop has emerged as a global phenomenon largely embraced by many of the “academically trained” music scholars who initially rejected it, how will those scholars and their schools now make way for the people they have historically excluded?</p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=734046536/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=2493878894/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/i-used-to-love-to-dream">i used to love to dream by A.D. Carson</a></iframe>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption"> In ‘crack, usa’ the author explores America’s relationship to drugs. </span></figcaption></figure>
<p>This is why that quote about me “scoring, arguably, the dopest job ever” has stuck with me. </p>
<p>I wonder if it’s fair to call what I do a form of legalized dope.</p>
<h2>America’s dope-dealing history</h2>
<p>In the late 1990s, I saw how fast hip-hop had become inescapable across the U.S., even in the small Midwestern town of Decatur, Illinois, where I grew up with my friend who is now serving federal prison time. </p>
<p>He and I have remained in contact. Among the things we discuss is how unlikely it is that I would be able to do what I do without his doing what he did.</p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=734046536/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1805641924/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/i-used-to-love-to-dream">i used to love to dream by A.D. Carson</a></iframe>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">‘nword gem’ describes the author’s relationships with friends and family.</span></figcaption></figure>
<p>Given the economic realities faced by people after leaving prison, we both know there are limitations to his opportunities if we choose to see our successes as shared accomplishments.</p>
<p>Depending on how dope is interpreted, prisons and universities serve as probable destinations for people who make their living with it. It has kept him in prison roughly the same amount of time as it has kept me in graduate school and in my profession. </p>
<p>This present reality has historical significance for how I think of dope, and what it means for people to have their existence authorized or legalized, and America’s relationship to Black people. </p>
<p>Many of the buildings at Clemson were built in the late 1880s using “<a href="http://glimpse.clemson.edu/convict-labor/">laborers convicted of mostly petty crimes</a>” that the state of South Carolina leased to the university. </p>
<p>Similarly, the University of Virginia was built by <a href="https://dei.virginia.edu/resources">renting enslaved laborers</a>. The University also is required by state law to purchase office furniture from a state-owned company that <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/14/public-universities-several-states-are-required-buy-prison-industries">depends on imprisoned people for labor</a>. The people who make the furniture are paid very little to do so. </p>
<p>The people in the federal prison where my friend who helped me pay for college is now housed work for paltry wages making towels and shirts for the U.S. Army.</p>
<p>Even with all of the time and distance between our pasts and present, our paths are still inextricably intertwined – along with all those others on or near the seemingly transient line that divides “legal” and “illegal” dope.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop, a scholar of the culture and its musical genres explores the meaning of the word ‘dope.’A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1647442021-09-07T12:53:12Z2021-09-07T12:53:12ZWomen face motherhood penalty in STEM careers long before they actually become mothers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418715/original/file-20210831-21-tu1umn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=208%2C73%2C3850%2C2066&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women in Ph.D STEM programs say they were told they had to choose between family and career. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-female-microbiologist-studying-coronavirus-royalty-free-image/1224202939">janiecbros/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Unfounded assumptions about how motherhood affects worker productivity can harm women’s careers in science, technology, engineering and math long before they are – or even intend to become – mothers, <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1177/08912432211006037">we found in a new study</a>. </p>
<p>It is well known that <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/">women are underrepresented</a> <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25585/promising-practices-for-addressing-the-underrepresentation-of-women-in-science-engineering-and-medicine">in the STEM workforce</a>, including in academia. For example, <a href="https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20198">women constituted</a> only 20% of tenured professorships in the physical sciences and 15% in engineering in 2017, despite the fact that their share of doctoral degrees in those fields <a href="https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21321/report/field-of-degree-women">has increased substantially</a> in recent decades.</p>
<p>We wanted to understand what might be causing women to be more likely than their male peers to forgo science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers in academia. We conducted extensive interviews with 57 childless Ph.D. students and post-doctoral scholars – both men and women – in natural science and engineering programs at elite U.S. research universities. </p>
<p>The interviews covered a wide range of topics, including workplace experiences and relationships, personal background and career and family plans. Using the data obtained from the interviews, we analyzed gender differences in intentions to pursue a career as a professor after earning a doctorate. </p>
<p>We found that, upon entering the Ph.D. program, men and women were equally interested in working as a professor after finishing their degree. But, by the time of our interviews, women were twice as likely as men to say they had decided not to pursue a career as a professor after all. </p>
<p>Our analysis ruled out a variety of factors that might explain this gender pattern, such as the interviewee’s discipline, their partner’s career and their age. Instead, we found that women who had changed their minds about becoming a professor cited a workplace culture that assumes motherhood – but not fatherhood – is incompatible with an academic career. We dubbed this the “specter of motherhood.”</p>
<p>Several of the women we interviewed said their advisers explicitly told them they have to choose between an academic career and a family and that “there’s more to life than babies.” Women also said they experienced intense pressure to reject, denigrate or hide the mere possibility of motherhood for fear of no longer being taken seriously in the profession. Some went to great lengths, such as hiding medically dangerous miscarriages or strategically telling others that they didn’t intend to have children. </p>
<p>One student recounted how, at a panel on gender issues in STEM, a woman professor’s “gist was that having children is sort of narcissistic. And she’s above that … like, simpletons want to have kids.”</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2010.11.006">Research shows</a> that mothers in high-status, elite professions - ones that demand significant levels of training and long work hours - are no less committed or productive than fathers or childless peers. Yet inaccurate stereotypes persist and are a <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1086/511799">critical source</a> of discrimination.</p>
<p>The irony is that, despite workplace cultures that can be hostile to motherhood, elite, often male-dominated, careers can be very favorable for parents – at least when it comes to overall levels of pay and access to benefits. The very things that make these jobs desirable in the first place – such as <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/equal_pay_issue_brief_final.pdf">high salaries</a>, <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1111/josi.12012">flexible work hours</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S1049-3867(00)00053-0">access to health insurance</a> and high-quality child care – also make them particularly supportive of parenting. </p>
<p>But if the culture of these workplaces pushes women out, it makes it doubly hard to challenge these damaging stereotypes. </p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>An outstanding question is the extent to which women in elite and male-dominated occupations that we did not study, like corporate law and finance, might be similarly affected by the “specter of motherhood.” </p>
<p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691126432/selling-women-short">Some evidence</a> <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018167">suggests</a> that they are. </p>
<p>If the problem is pervasive across many industries and workplaces, targeted policies like improved child care or more flexible hours are important, but not enough. Leaders also need to proactively challenge the narrative that motherhood can’t coexist with success in an elite career.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164744/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New study finds that workplace hostility toward motherhood in STEM fields can deter even young, childless women from pursuing academic careers.Sarah Thebaud, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of California, Santa BarbaraCatherine Taylor, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa BarbaraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/918932018-03-01T11:40:52Z2018-03-01T11:40:52ZWhy the web has challenged scientists’ authority – and why they need to adapt<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208375/original/file-20180301-36700-supnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Knowledge has been democratized. What does that mean for scientists?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/business-people-working-technology-concept-336870914?src=3h7cArJi5N8ZLAWYvj8eNQ-1-17">Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Academia is in the midst of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-academics-are-losing-relevance-in-society-and-how-to-stop-it-64579">crisis of relevance</a>. Many Americans are <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/">ignoring the conclusions of scientists</a> on a variety of issues including climate change and natural selection. Some <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-decade-in-higher-education-funding">state governments are cutting funding</a> for higher education; the <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/what-s-trump-s-2018-budget-request-science">federal government</a> is threatening to cut funding for research. Resentful students face ever <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/24/new-study-attempts-show-how-much-state-funding-cuts-push-tuition">increasing costs for tuition</a>.</p>
<p>And distrustful segments of society fear what academia does; one survey found that 58 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/20/republicans-skeptical-of-colleges-impact-on-u-s-but-most-see-benefits-for-workforce-preparation/">colleges and universities have a negative effect</a> on the way things are going in the country.</p>
<p>There are multiple causes for this existential crisis, but one in particular deserves special attention. <a href="http://www.infogineering.net/web-internet.htm">The web</a> is fundamentally changing the channels through which science is communicated – who can create it, who can access it and ultimately what it is. Society now has instant access to more news and information than ever before; knowledge is being democratized. And as a result, the role of the scientist in society is in flux. </p>
<p>But rather than facing this changing landscape head on, research shows that many in academia are resisting its inevitability. In many ways, this response has parallels to that of the Catholic Church in the wake of the invention of the printing press and its role in hastening the <a href="http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1819-1893,_Schaff._Philip,_History_Of_Christian_Church_%5B07%5D_The_German_Reformation,_EN.pdf">Protestant Reformation</a>. I hope this comparison offers a compelling provocation for the scientific community to come to grips with the cataclysmic changes we are now living through and ignore at our peril.</p>
<h2>Disrupting the Catholic Church</h2>
<p>Developed by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century, the printing press made books cheaper and easier to produce. Where a monk might be able to copy four or five pages a day, a printing press <a href="https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/bringing-gods-word-people/">could produce as many as 3,600</a> a day. </p>
<p>Fifty years later, Martin Luther leveraged the printing press to bring about the Reformation, whereas <a href="https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/urban-reformation-preachers-and-printers/">others who previously lacked the technology</a> could not. Building on his 95 theses, <a href="https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/urban-reformation-preachers-and-printers">hundreds of thousands of his pamphlets</a> were printed, offering interpretations of the Bible that differed from those of the Catholic Church. Others printed their own pamphlets, offering even more interpretations (of varying quality) on what the Bible can and did say. These pamphlets were consumed by an interested public who could now access the Bible directly, since it was one of the first books printed.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208380/original/file-20180301-36696-1ki2shc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208380/original/file-20180301-36696-1ki2shc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208380/original/file-20180301-36696-1ki2shc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208380/original/file-20180301-36696-1ki2shc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208380/original/file-20180301-36696-1ki2shc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208380/original/file-20180301-36696-1ki2shc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208380/original/file-20180301-36696-1ki2shc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208380/original/file-20180301-36696-1ki2shc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The introduction of the printing press and moveable type caused a revolution in communication and challenged the Catholic Church hierarchy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/retro-printing-press-gutenberg-2319509/">Skeptacular</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response, the <a href="https://prezi.com/tzwe8klf3anb/from-gutenberg-to-the-internet-a-comparison-of-the-impact-of-gutenberg-printing-press-and-the-internet-as-media-technologies/">Catholic Church</a> argued that the written word was reserved for “God’s chosen priests” and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Future-Mass-Media-Communication/dp/1572738073">not for regular people</a> and sought to put the genie back in the bottle by shutting down printing presses, labeling the purveyors of alternative views as heretical and publishing their own pamphlets. </p>
<p>As we all now know, it didn’t work. The world changed in ways that were unstoppable. The Catholic Church is now one of many authorities on the Bible, as there are now a variety of accepted approaches to interpreting scripture that build off of various traditions, often with interchange and collaboration among them. In the coming decades, it would be reasonable to expect the same fate for today’s notions of science.</p>
<h2>The web and ‘alternative science’</h2>
<p>The arrival of the World Wide Web has many parallels to the emergence of the printing press. By the mid-to-<a href="https://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/08/06/20-years-ago-today-the-world-wide-web-opened-to-the-public/">late 1990s</a>, the web had grown in distribution and come into common usage. </p>
<p>One outcome of this wider usage, particularly as we entered the 2000s, was easier access to scientific information from a wider variety of sources. And, just as had happened to the Catholic Church, the academy and scientists are being displaced as but one arbiter of scientific knowledge among many. Though competing and questionable scientific findings are not entirely new – notably on the link between <a href="http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/">cigarettes</a> and cancer in the 1960s – the web now makes it possible for the general public to mine the web for scientific information on a completely different scale and either draw their own conclusions or rely on other’s interpretations about what it says. </p>
<p>Ask any doctor today what it is like to offer a diagnosis with a proposed treatment plan and have the patient offer their own <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-rely-on-dr-google-for-health-information-on-the-wild-wild-web-4332">web-based diagnosis</a>. Ask a parent who chooses not to vaccinate their child for <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/four-vaccine-myths-and-where-they-came">fear of autism</a> or someone who <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1476127010395065">denies the science of climate change</a>, and they can present a string of web-based scientific studies to defend their position. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208378/original/file-20180301-36700-2hy9oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208378/original/file-20180301-36700-2hy9oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208378/original/file-20180301-36700-2hy9oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208378/original/file-20180301-36700-2hy9oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208378/original/file-20180301-36700-2hy9oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208378/original/file-20180301-36700-2hy9oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208378/original/file-20180301-36700-2hy9oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208378/original/file-20180301-36700-2hy9oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The academy and scientists are being displaced as but one arbiter of scientific information among many.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:University_of_Glasgow,_East_Quadrangle_-_landscape.jpg">Stinglehammer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is now a proliferation of alternative science (of varying quality) through media outlets and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html?pagewanted=all">pseudo-scientific journals</a> that leave many within academia discouraged and demoralized.</p>
<p>The academy has, in effect, entered its own period of “reformation” with its authority in flux. Just as the Protestant Reformation was anchored in some very legitimate criticisms of the Catholic Church, notably indulgences, this reformation is anchored in some very legitimate criticisms of academia – rising tuition, perceptions of a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html">liberal bias</a>, charges that scientific research cannot be <a href="https://www.nature.com/collections/prbfkwmwvz/">reproduced</a> and thus verified, and <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong">questions of the social value</a> of much academic research.</p>
<p>But, many scientists are responding to this reformation’s challenge by trying to question the validity or credentials of other voices, or dismissing misinformed people. </p>
<p>Research shows that many scientists <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0963662511418743">do not see it as their role</a> to educate the public and <a href="http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/7/2077.full">can be dismissive</a> of both those who do and the channels with which they do it. Surveys show that only 24 percent, for example, admit to <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/02/15/how-scientists-engage-public/">writing blogs</a> and nearly 40 percent <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mm/">vow never to use Twitter or Facebook</a> for academic purposes despite the reality that we have a president who has shown the rising influence of social media. </p>
<p>Indeed, there are many within the public who feel a distasteful level of condescension and <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/group/leopoldleadership/cgi-bin/wordpress/?p=5373">disdain from academic scholars</a> who see themselves as separate and superior. In the words of one scientist, writing in the comments section of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-academics-are-losing-relevance-in-society-and-how-to-stop-it-64579">online essay</a> on this topic, “I would love to explain (my research to the public) but I cannot. I cannot teach my pet hamster differential equations either.” </p>
<p>But this attitude only erodes the trust between the public and the academy. Just like the church’s failed response to the Reformation, this resistant and defiant response won’t work either. </p>
<h2>Taking to the web</h2>
<p>In the face of the changes wrought by the web, the academy must evolve in multiple ways. For example, scientific research in the 21st century should find ways to break down the artificially narrow disciplinary silos that have come to dominate academic life, and link multiple disciplines in research that reflects the complexity of real-world issues.</p>
<p>Next, it must move toward <a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/612558-Inter-%20and%20Trans-disciplinary%20Research%20-%20A%20Critical%20Perspective.pdf">transdisciplinary</a> research to recognize the knowledge that emerges from interacting with communities outside the academy and resides in places other than academic journals, including the web. Local communities, for example, can be useful partners in urban research studies and business, and nonprofits can have much to offer in research projects that study the market.</p>
<p>Further, colleges and universities must accelerate teaching of how to become <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/learning/lesson-plans/evaluating-sources-in-a-post-truth-world-ideas-for-teaching-and-learning-about-fake-news.html">discerning consumers</a> of online content, being able to distinguish rigorous and objective research from content that may have a political agenda and bias, or represents shoddy or unreliable methodology, data and review. </p>
<p>Next, scientists will be expected to <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Isolated-Scholars-Making/151707">communicate more effectively</a> with consumers of scientific knowledge to explain not only what its research shows, but also how it arrived at its conclusions and the value those conclusions bring to society. This task will involve a new set of skills in communication, storytelling, narrative and the use of the web that scientists lack today.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/40992/title/Science-Gone-Social/">Some within the academy</a> are beginning to adapt. Indeed, <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/online-collaboration-scientists-and-the-social-network-1.15711">studies</a> find that some academics use the web to boost their professional presence, post content related to their work, discover related peers, find recommended research articles, test new ideas and participate in discussions on research-related issues. One study even found that social media platforms like <a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36274/title/Opinion--Tweeting-to-the-Top/">Twitter increase exposure</a> for academic research within the academy. </p>
<p>Such shifts will be impossible if they are not supported by new forms of training and rewards. And some signs of change are becoming visible. The <a href="http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/tf_report_what_counts_evaluating_public_communication_in_tenure_and_promotion_final_august_2016.pdf">American Sociological Association</a> published a report on how tenure and promotion committees might consider researchers’ involvement in public communication and social media. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://socialmedia.mayoclinic.org/2016/05/25/mayo-clinic-includes-social-media-scholarship-activities-in-academic-advancement/">Mayo Clinic</a> and Michigan’s <a href="https://president.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/04/NSPEC-Final-Report-May-2016.pdf">Ross School of Business</a> have gone one step further, adding social media and professional impact, respectively, to their annual review processes. New metrics, like <a href="https://www.altmetric.com/">Altmetric</a> and <a href="https://profiles.impactstory.org/">Impact Story</a> are searching for ways to quantitatively measure such practical impact. And, going to the source, <a href="https://www.rrbm.network/">Responsible Research in Business and Management</a> is seeking to promote more top-tier research that addresses problems important to business and society. These changes reflect the growing interests of a new cadre of doctoral students and junior faculty who want to have more real-world impact with their work. </p>
<p>In the end, the challenges that science and the scientist now face offer an opportunity to revitalize the academy by connecting it more deeply with the society and world it studies. It also offers the opportunity to revitalize our democracy by increasing the scientific literacy of an informed electorate. Both foretell an evolving role of the scientist that is more in line with what many have long seen as its <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1056492603256272">special and honored place in society</a>, not separate or above it, but part of it. In many ways, this is the fulfillment of the <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/279/5350/491.full">social contract</a> that many believe the scientific community has always been obligated to honor.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91893/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew J. Hoffman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Much like the printing press upset the social order centuries ago, the explosion of information online is challenging the role of scientists in society.Andrew J. Hoffman, Holcim (US) Professor at the Ross School of Business and School of Environment and Sustainability, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/806512017-07-27T02:01:11Z2017-07-27T02:01:11ZWhen the federal budget funds scientific research, it’s the economy that benefits<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179810/original/file-20170726-27705-12b4ng0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=298%2C502%2C2708%2C1823&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Impacts of federal research funding can be felt region-wide.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/view-downtown-seattle-skyline-washington-usa-510934489">f11photo/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Emergency: You need more <a href="https://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/june97/mills.html">disposable diapers</a>, right away. You hop into your car and trust your ride will be a safe one. Thanks to your phone’s GPS and the <a href="http://www.longviewinstitute.org/projects/marketfundamentalism/microchip/">microchips that run it</a>, you map out how to get to the store fast. Once there, the <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/sensational60.pdf">barcode on the package</a> lets you accurately check out your purchase and run. Each step in this process owes a debt to the universities, researchers, students and the federal funding support that got these products and technologies rolling in the first place.</p>
<p>By some tallies, almost two-thirds of the technologies with the most far-reaching impact over the last 50 years <a href="http://www.bu.edu/research/articles/funding-for-scientific-research/">stemmed from federally funded R&D</a> at national laboratories and research universities.</p>
<p>The benefits from this investment have trickled down into countless <a href="http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/technology/1110/gallery.government_inventions/index.html">aspects of our everyday lives</a>. Even the internet that allows you to read this article online has its roots in federal dollars: The U.S. Department of Defense supported installation of the first node of a <a href="https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/arpanet">communications network called ARPANET</a> at UCLA back in 1969.</p>
<p>As Congress debates the upcoming budget, its members might remember the economic impacts and improved quality of life that past <a href="https://nsf.gov/about/history/nifty50/index.jsp">congressional support of basic and applied research</a> has created.</p>
<h2>Federal dollars do more than fund labs</h2>
<p>Here in the state of Washington, federally funded research at both my employer, Washington State University, and the University of Washington has led to transformational innovations. It’s helped spawn not only new products that save and improve lives, but productivity growth through new businesses and services.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179521/original/file-20170724-11166-1s8eb5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179521/original/file-20170724-11166-1s8eb5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179521/original/file-20170724-11166-1s8eb5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179521/original/file-20170724-11166-1s8eb5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179521/original/file-20170724-11166-1s8eb5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179521/original/file-20170724-11166-1s8eb5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179521/original/file-20170724-11166-1s8eb5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179521/original/file-20170724-11166-1s8eb5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Zhang lab at WSU works on recycling carbon composite fiber materials.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert Hubner, WSU</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Just a few examples include new kinds of <a href="https://cmec.wsu.edu/documents/2015/04/wmel-history.pdf">composite-based lumber</a>, <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2015/these-researchers-are-building-extra-brainy-smart-homes-to-monitor-aging-adults/">smart home technology for the aged</a>, <a href="https://nephrology.uw.edu/about/history-innovation">kidney dialysis machines</a>, <a href="https://magazine.wsu.edu/2015/08/16/the-ion-investigators/">airport explosive detectors</a> and new varieties of wheat, <a href="https://news.wsu.edu/2016/11/21/mcdonalds-chooses-wsu-potatoes/">potatoes</a> and other <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/quinoa-comes-to-the-northwest/">agricultural crops</a> that we enjoy at our tables and in numerous products.</p>
<p>All these inventions relied on federal investment combined with university research lab expertise. The important final step was commercialization. Together it all led to positive economic impacts.</p>
<p>We see this pattern again and again.</p>
<p>For instance, next time you’re on Google, remember it was founded by two Stanford University doctoral students who were funded in part by <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100660">National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships</a>. Fast forward 20 years and here in my backyard, the company is busy building a new campus in downtown Seattle that may house <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2016/paul-allens-vulcan-develop-huge-complex-google-amazons-backyard/">3,000-4,000 workers</a> by 2019. Many of those hired will likely be <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/google-plans-big-expansion-to-south-lake-union/">graduates from both WSU and UW</a>.</p>
<p>The fact is that <a href="http://www.sciencecoalition.org/downloads/AMI_v3_4-17-17.pdf">thousands of companies</a> can trace their roots to federally funded university research. And since the majority of federally funded research takes place <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/82xx/doc8221/06-18-research.pdf">at America’s research universities</a> – often in concert with federal labs and private research partners – these spinoff companies are often located in their local communities all across the country.</p>
<p>Just one of these firms, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, employs over 2,800 workers and started with researchers at the University of Colorado who create instruments, data exploitation solutions and technologies for civil, commercial, <a href="http://www.sciencecoalition.org/successstories/company/ball-aerospace-technologies-corp">aerospace and defense applications</a>. Another in Audubon, Pennsylvania develops rapid, noninvasive <a href="http://www.sciencecoalition.org/successstories/company/liquid-biotech-usa-inc">“liquid biopsy” tests</a> for cancer screening and early detection based on research from the University of Pennsylvania. And another company with 85 employees in Madison develops high-density <a href="http://www.sciencecoalition.org/successstories/company/nimblegen-systems-inc">DNA microarrays</a> for pharmaceutical research based on research from the University of Wisconsin.</p>
<p>The list goes on and on.</p>
<h2>A Washington state case study</h2>
<p>Focusing federal research funding on research universities who enjoy strong corporate and business partners has <a href="https://www.rdmag.com/article/2015/04/how-academic-institutions-partner-private-industry">strategic value</a>. There is little doubt that the state of <a href="http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/06/16/states-with-the-fastest-and-slowest-growing-economies-2/2/">Washington’s recent economic successes</a>, for example, comes down to a cycle of innovation and discovery that feeds additional economic growth and private-public-university relationships. Federal R&D funding is a key ingredient.</p>
<p>Our two public research universities have strong relationships with federal funding agencies. Together Washington State University and the University of Washington – the largest recipient of federal research funding in the nation among public universities – form the technological and intellectual pillar around which many of our state’s successful businesses are built and sustained. Both universities graduate thousands of undergraduate and graduate students who provide a constant supply of educated, trained workers. In turn, the universities and federal R&D investment benefit from the active engagement and monetary support of business leaders and professionals. Innovative ideas and knowledge percolate back and forth between federally funded research and the private sector.</p>
<p>A recent milestone provides an example.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179516/original/file-20170724-11666-199zx5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179516/original/file-20170724-11666-199zx5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179516/original/file-20170724-11666-199zx5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179516/original/file-20170724-11666-199zx5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179516/original/file-20170724-11666-199zx5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179516/original/file-20170724-11666-199zx5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179516/original/file-20170724-11666-199zx5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179516/original/file-20170724-11666-199zx5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gassing up with renewable, affordable jet fuel – thanks to a public/private research collaboration.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert Hubner, WSU</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Federal research dollars helped solidify a collaboration aimed at solving a big problem: the high carbon emissions from air travel, a contributor to climate change. WSU worked together with the UW and a host of other regional public research institutions, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Alaska Airlines, Weyerhaeuser Corp., Gevo, Inc. and a large alliance of private industry to develop a <a href="https://nararenewables.org/">renewable, affordable source of jet fuel</a>.</p>
<p>Each collaborator brought unique expertise to the innovation table. USDA provided the funding and the policy commitment to the development of biofuels that spurred matching investment from private partners. Alaska Airlines brought the need to reduce its carbon emissions and its leadership in applying clean technologies to improve its environmental performance. WSU contributed decades of pertinent experience in both basic science and applied research. UW researchers demonstrated the fuel’s potential reduction in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. And, Gevo, Inc. brought its private-sector skills and patented technology in developing bio-based alternatives to petroleum-based products. The sum of these parts created a strong, successful partnership that took a big step toward sustainable aviation.</p>
<p>Individual researchers with their deep expertise remain the bedrock of the research enterprise. But teams of scientists – drawn from research universities, government and the private sector – all <a href="http://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&context=publication">working on multidisciplinary problems</a> are having an increasing impact.</p>
<h2>Recipe for amplifying R&D investment</h2>
<p>Importantly, this phenomenon is not unique to the state of Washington. The <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/studies/americas-most-innovative-tech-hubs/">nation’s most active innovation hubs</a> and successful regional economies have similar factors that drive economic growth and resiliency, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Top-tier research institutions supported by federal, state and private funding;</p></li>
<li><p>A concentration of talented and diverse workers;</p></li>
<li><p>An ecosystem of firms, entrepreneurs and intermediaries;</p></li>
<li><p>Accessible pools of risk capital;</p></li>
<li><p>A global orientation; and</p></li>
<li><p>Communities that take advantage of the area’s unique assets and advantages in creating a desirable quality of life.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>We see these conditions <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-20-most-innovative-cities-in-the-us-2013-2#4-corvallis-oregon-17">coming together around the country</a>: in Silicon Valley, the Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle Park, Boston’s metro area and other innovation hubs in cities like Boulder, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; Austin, Texas; and Gainesville, Florida.</p>
<p>It’s this <a href="https://itif.org/publications/2008/07/09/where-do-innovations-come-transformations-us-national-innovation-system-1970">cooperative model</a> and leveraging of federal R&D dollars that have long been this <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/localizing-the-economic-impact-of-research-and-development/">nation’s competitive advantage</a>. With fewer federal dollars allocated to scientific R&D, the next Silicon Valley – with its potential for an economic renaissance for a new area not even on our innovation map yet – may not emerge as quickly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>In his position as VP of Research for WSU, Christopher Keane oversees projects that receive grants from DOE, USDA, NIH, NSF and DOD.</span></em></p>Research dollars don’t stay locked up in academia and government labs. R&D collaborations with the private sector are common – and grow the innovation economy.Christopher Keane, Vice President for Research and Professor of Physics, Washington State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/719332017-02-09T03:47:01Z2017-02-09T03:47:01ZAllison Davis: Forgotten black scholar studied – and faced – structural racism in 1940s America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156084/original/image-20170208-17316-1b8pki3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=274%2C217%2C3181%2C2441&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Allison Davis, circa 1965. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Davis family.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When black historian Carter G. Woodson <a href="https://asalh100.org/origins-of-black-history-month/">founded Negro History Week</a> in 1926 (expanded to Black History Month in 1976), the prevailing sentiment was that black people had no history. They were little more than the hewers of wood and the drawers of water who, in their insistence upon even basic political rights, comprised an alarming “Negro problem.”</p>
<p>To combat such ignorance and prejudice, Woodson worked relentlessly to compile the rich history of black people. He especially liked to emphasize the role of exceptional African-Americans who made major contributions to American life. At the time, that was a radical idea.</p>
<p>W. Allison Davis (1902-1983) came of age in the generation after Woodson, but he was precisely the type of exceptional black person whom Woodson liked to uphold as evidence of black intelligence, civility and achievement. </p>
<p>Davis was an accomplished anthropologist and a trailblazer who was the first African-American to earn tenure at a predominantly white university – the University of Chicago in 1947. But Davis has faded from popular memory. In my book “<a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo27595989.html">The Lost Black Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought</a>,” I make the case that he belongs within the pantheon of illustrious African-American – and simply, American – pioneers.</p>
<h2>Allison Davis, forgotten pioneer</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154606/original/image-20170128-30397-1mfnlmz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154606/original/image-20170128-30397-1mfnlmz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154606/original/image-20170128-30397-1mfnlmz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154606/original/image-20170128-30397-1mfnlmz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154606/original/image-20170128-30397-1mfnlmz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154606/original/image-20170128-30397-1mfnlmz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154606/original/image-20170128-30397-1mfnlmz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154606/original/image-20170128-30397-1mfnlmz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Allison and Elizabeth Davis in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1939.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Davis family.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Allison Davis and his wife Elizabeth Stubbs Davis were among the first black anthropologists in the country. Bringing their experiences on the wrong side of the color line to mainstream social science, they made landmark contributions to their field, including “<a href="https://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/2009/3815.html">Deep South</a>” (1941) and “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Children_of_bondage.html?id=yV9JAAAAMAAJ">Children of Bondage</a>” (1940). Those books sold tens of thousands of copies in the middle decades of the 20th century; they advanced social theory by explaining how race and class functioned as interlocking systems of oppression; and they broke methodological ground in combining ethnography with psychological assessments rarely applied in those days. </p>
<p>Allison Davis’ extensive body of research also had a real impact on social policy. It influenced the proceedings in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), undergirded the success of the <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ohs">federal Head Start program</a> and prompted school districts all across the country to revise or reject intelligence tests, which Davis had proven to be culturally biased. His “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Social_Class_Influences_Upon_Learning.html?id=aCwMAQAAIAAJ">Social-Class Influences Upon Learning</a>” (1948) made the most compelling case of that era that intelligence tests discriminated against lower-class people. </p>
<p>Despite the very real advances that Davis helped to inspire within American education in the 20th century, today those same accomplishments are at risk. American <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/the-architecture-of-segregation.html">schools remain as racially segregated as ever</a> due to poverty and discriminatory public policies. The investment in public education, especially compensatory programs such as Head Start, looks to further diminish amid the growing support for privatization, charter schools, and school vouchers – or, the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/11/us/politics/betsy-devos-education-reform-governors-essa.html"> Betsy “DeVos playbook,”</a> as critics describe it. To understand the nature of these issues today, one must understand their history, which Davis’ career helps to illuminate.</p>
<p>Davis’ scholarly contributions are unquestionable when considered now, many decades later. But as the problems above suggest, it is no longer enough to simply celebrate exceptional African-American pioneers like Davis, or just give lip service to their ideas. The next step is confronting the circumstances that constrained their lives. This means viewing their experiences in relation to the <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10602.html">structural racism that has shaped American life</a> since colonial times.</p>
<h2>Bending – not breaking – academic color line</h2>
<p>Consider Davis’ landmark appointment to the University of Chicago. Fitting the story into a master narrative of racial progress obscures more than it reveals. While the appointment did represent the crossing of a racial boundary and heralded the many more barriers that would be challenged in the ensuing decades, a closer look at the story gives little reason to celebrate. </p>
<p>Like all black scholars of his time, Davis had to be twice as good to get half as much as his fellow white male scholars (and the situation was far worse for black women scholars like Elizabeth Stubbs Davis). Only through compiling a truly remarkable record of achievement, and only amid the national fervor to make the U.S. the “arsenal of democracy” during World War II, would <a href="http://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.84.4.0534">Chicago even consider appointing Allison Davis</a>. Even then, he only received a three-year contract on the condition that the <a href="http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/hall_of_fame/julius_rosenwald">Julius Rosenwald Foundation (JRF)</a> agree to subsidize most of his salary.</p>
<p>Even with the subsidy, certain university faculty members, such as Georgia-born <a href="https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.OGBURN">sociologist William Fielding Ogburn</a>, actively opposed the appointment on racist grounds. So, too, did some trustees at the JRF, including the wealthy <a href="http://specialcollections.tulane.edu/archon/?p=creators/creator&id=24">New Orleans philanthropist Edgar B. Stern</a>, who attempted to sabotage the grant. Discounting Davis’ accomplishments and implying instead a sort of reverse racism, Stern asserted that “the purpose of this move is to have Davis join the Chicago Faculty, not in spite of the fact that he is a Negro but because he is a Negro.” Similarly myopic charges have been a <a href="https://www.rienner.com/title/Reverse_Discrimination_Dismantling_the_Myth">staple of criticism against affirmative actions programs</a> in more recent times.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156080/original/image-20170208-17349-1p0n8hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156080/original/image-20170208-17349-1p0n8hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156080/original/image-20170208-17349-1p0n8hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156080/original/image-20170208-17349-1p0n8hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156080/original/image-20170208-17349-1p0n8hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156080/original/image-20170208-17349-1p0n8hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156080/original/image-20170208-17349-1p0n8hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156080/original/image-20170208-17349-1p0n8hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Quadrangle Club was where (white) faculty gathered at University of Chicago, midcentury.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?one=apf2-06088.xml">University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-06088, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The opposition ultimately failed to torpedo Davis’ appointment, but it did underscore the type of environment he would face at Chicago. As faculty members openly debated if he should even be allowed to instruct the university’s mainly white students, the administration barred him from the Quadrangle Club, where faculty regularly gathered and ate lunch. In a private letter to him, the university made clear that it “cannot assume responsibility for <a href="http://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.84.4.0534">Mr. Davis’ personal happiness</a> and his social treatment.”</p>
<p>As time wore on, such overt racism did begin to ebb, or at least confine itself to more private quarters. What never did subside, though, was an equally pernicious institutional racism that marginalized Davis’ accomplishments and rendered him professionally invisible.</p>
<p>As Davis collaborated with renowned white scholars at Chicago, his contributions were submerged under theirs – even when he was the first author and chief theorist of the work. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan, <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-professors-and-the-poor/">writing for Commentary magazine in 1968</a>, failed to count Davis among his list of black scholars who studied black poverty (even though Davis was among the most prolific black scholars in that area), he registered the depth of Davis’ marginalization. Such marginalization, which stemmed also from Davis’ interdisciplinary approach and iconoclasm, has caused even historians to lose track of him and his important career.</p>
<h2>Davis was ensnared by the racism he studied</h2>
<p>Even the most exceptional African-Americans have never been able to transcend the racial system that ensnares them. Davis’ appointment did not usher in a new era of integration of faculties at predominantly white universities. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=RvlZAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=dilemma+of+the+american+negro+scholar">It took another three decades</a> for substantial numbers of black scholars to begin receiving offers of full-time, tenure-track employment. And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/opinion/sunday/forcing-black-men-out-of-society.html">because of the vastly disproportionate rates</a> of poverty, incarceration and municipal neglect plaguing the black community, <a href="https://www.jbhe.com">jobs in higher education</a> often continued – and still continue – to be out of reach.</p>
<p>Few people better understood, or more thoughtfully analyzed, these very realities than did Allison Davis. This was a man who laid bare the systems of race and class that govern American life. He understood that education needed to be a bulwark for democracy, not merely a ladder for individual social mobility. He embodied how to confront injustice with sustained, productive resistance. Moreover, this was a man who refused to surrender to despair, and who chose to dedicate his life to making the country a better, more equal, more democratic place.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71933/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David A. Varel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>His landmark contributions to anthropology have faded from memory, despite real-world policy impact during the mid-20th century.David A. Varel, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, University of MississippiLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/672192016-10-19T01:02:38Z2016-10-19T01:02:38ZAmerica’s Nobel success is the story of immigrants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142227/original/image-20161018-15108-77suz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What does the Nobel mean for America?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/entirelyamelia/10397523303/in/photolist-gQN2ra-ifKzVn-aHGFTt-ifKmqD-pbPMav-ifKHXe-ifJRYt-ifKtHU-ifKJHc-aTfCDD-pbR2tB-pbQKib-ifKHn9-pbRiJ2-ifKyU4-ifLbhP-ifK9xG-ifKnEG-ifKBPn-ifKqpt-ifKsVb-oZmacH-ifKS7S-ifK6Gj-ifKkvx-aBLEg5-aBLF5L-aBLEio-aTcrQ4-aTfRyv-aTfZTH-aBHZwe-ifKc8R-aBLDRN-gDgYNk-aBHZRx-aTfEGx-9vBMjS-aTfPix-ifKg4g-aTfzRT-aTfST6-64Wh4T-aTfWLR-aTfXHF-767zoo-aTfxQX-aTg2on-aTfQCK-aTfZ1D">Amelia Gapin</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If it were not for <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-are-bob-dylans-songs-literature-67061">Bob Dylan</a> – the singer, songwriter and now <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-bob-dylan-isnt-the-first-lyricist-to-win-the-nobel-67023">Nobel laureate</a> – 2016 would have become the first year since 1999 without a Nobel winner born in the United States. </p>
<p>Since World War II, the U.S. has dominated the four research <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org">Nobels</a> (in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics). It did so <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/nobel-prizes-1557">this year</a> too. But there was a difference: None of the nine scholars who shared the four research Nobel Prizes in 2016 was born in the United States. However, as many as six of the winners work at U.S. universities and now call the United States as their home. </p>
<p>In other words, this year, as in so many others, America’s Nobel success was a story of immigrants. At a time when <a href="https://theconversation.com/immigration-five-essential-reads-64656">immigration</a> has become a hot-button issue, this fact <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/1011/Why-Nobel-winning-scientists-are-talking-about-immigration-video">did not go unnoticed</a>, including by the White House. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"786652827129032704"}"></div></p>
<p>So why does this matter?</p>
<p>I have been associated with U.S. academia for a quarter-century – first as a student from Pakistan and then as a researcher, a teacher and more recently a university administrator. I have experienced the magical embrace of U.S. higher education firsthand.</p>
<p>I believe the diversity of the Nobel winners is a testimony to the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00091380409604964?journalCode=vchn20">spectacular exceptionalism of U.S. higher education</a>: U.S. academic institutions attract, welcome, embrace and ultimately benefit from the best intellectual talent from all corners of the world.</p>
<h2>Race to the top</h2>
<p>There are many things that make American higher education truly exceptional. Immigration, and the ease and openness of U.S. academia to scholars from across the world, is certainly not the only one. </p>
<p>But, it is an important one. </p>
<p>In fact, many other <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/688061468337210820/The-road-to-academic-excellence-the-making-of-world-class-research-universities">countries are trying hard</a>, though less successfully, to replicate the U.S. experience. For example, countries such as Singapore, South Korea, even Saudi Arabia, which are investing heavily in <a href="http://www.nyas.org/publications/Detail.aspx?cid=e34a05fe-3f4b-4a80-a320-9e37fc36c5dd">building their own research universities</a>, begin by trying to attract top researchers from across the world. They offer them incentives such as outstanding facilities and lucrative salaries.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142228/original/image-20161018-15089-qjlnmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142228/original/image-20161018-15089-qjlnmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142228/original/image-20161018-15089-qjlnmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142228/original/image-20161018-15089-qjlnmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142228/original/image-20161018-15089-qjlnmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142228/original/image-20161018-15089-qjlnmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142228/original/image-20161018-15089-qjlnmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Nobel Academy in Stockholm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/williamjm/20182617176/in/photolist-wKtbWd-wNib7K-5hiNWT-4yQy2p-6BSsma-6BWpKE-9vjvea-xt3dW-mc5hL-86sL44-7mU5Dp-5LNtTx-5GN7Lo-dsHqQ6-fRWPd-nvPMMz-aTbrbe-2kofaH-8KxqBa-8KxoPM-B81KPK-BX8Vpn-nvQ2bj-nvPLHF-8KAuzy-8KxoSM-8KAq4q-8KxodB-8Kxqqi-8KAsdE-6AnZuU-DG8gF1-cBzDyE-P7qyr-CYqDF-8KAqJh-aUTmdH-8KxoW2-yVRAm-GoqJeT-9bBdFG-uv7Pc-gZmLg-nN2mxt-utgDm-8KAsr7-aDzt2-8KxoH2-3iAxUz-CubFoJ">William Marnoch</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Such incentives help. But they are not enough. U.S. universities are quite unique in the way they welcome and embrace talent, which helps attract the best in the world. </p>
<p>The journey of Nobel laureate <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1999/zewail-bio.html">Ahmed H. Zewail</a> (who received the Nobel for chemistry in 1999) is illustrative of the exceptionalism of U.S. higher education and the culture of openness. <a href="http://www.aucpress.com/p-3058-voyage-through-time.aspx">Writing about his journey</a> from his native Egypt to U.S. academia, Zewail describes how he was embraced by all the universities he was part of – whether as a student at University of Pennsylvania, as a postdoc at University of California, Berkeley or as a professor at California Institute of Technology. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“My science family came from all over the world and members were of varied backgrounds, cultures, and abilities. The diversity in this ‘small world’ I worked in daily provided the most stimulating environment, with many challenges and much optimism.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>America’s research excellence</h2>
<p>The history of the Nobel awards is, in fact, a rather neat lens through which we can see this play out.</p>
<p>The very first American to win a Nobel in the sciences was <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1907/michelson-facts.html">Albert A. Michelson</a>. He was awarded the prize in 1907 for his research on the measurement of the speed of light. Michelson’s parents had immigrated to the United States from Strzelno in then Prussia, now Poland, when he was only two years old.</p>
<p>Since its inception in 1901, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/all/">579 times to 911 people and organizations</a>. The U.S. alone has had more than 350 Nobel winners. More than 100 of these have been immigrants and <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/countries.html">individuals born outside of the United States</a>. </p>
<p>No other country comes close. The two countries apart from the U.S. that can claim <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11926364/Nobel-Prize-winners-Which-country-has-the-most-Nobel-laureates.html">more than 100 laureates</a> are the United Kingdom and Germany. What is noteworthy is that a number of winners of both these countries were living and working in the U.S. when they were awarded their Nobel. </p>
<p>In fact, if it were to be a category of its own, immigrants to the U.S. who won the Nobel, would would come second only to the U.S.-born laureates group. Their number exceeds that of laureates <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/countries.html">born in any single country</a>. </p>
<p>The point is the global movement of intellect and ideas is often necessary and perhaps central to the creation of knowledge and production of great research. The United States has both immensely contributed to and benefited from the excellence of such research. </p>
<p>With increasing globalization, this trend will not slow down. If anything, this trend is on the rise and is likely to continue. Consider, for example, the research Nobels awarded to those in the United States in the last two years. Of the ten laureates who live, teach and work in the United States, all but one were born outside the U.S, and six studied in U.S. universities. </p>
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<h2>Attacks on openness are misguided</h2>
<p>Great research is a truly global enterprise. In context of <a href="https://theconversation.com/immigration-five-essential-reads-64656">current conversations on immigration</a> – and the notion that somehow immigrants might be thwarting America’s “greatness” – it is instructive to note just how much of America’s great success in Nobel Prizes has come because of immigrants. </p>
<p>Attacks on <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-were-wrong-to-blame-immigrants-for-our-sputtering-economies-56324">American openness</a> are not just <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/1011/Why-Nobel-winning-scientists-are-talking-about-immigration-video">misguided</a>, they are <a href="http://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Trump-Presidency-Could-Keep/236662">self-defeating</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/before-trump-proposed-his-border-wall-vigilantes-made-it-a-national-obsession-58909">Trump supporters</a> in the United States – much like <a href="https://theconversation.com/immigration-rhetoric-is-a-threat-to-britains-long-term-growth-27248">Brexit supporters</a> across the Atlantic – seem worried that this embrace of the outsider is making America less great. </p>
<p>As America’s Nobel success testifies, they could not be more wrong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adil Najam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Immigrants have contributed to America’s great success at the Nobel. Of the 350 Nobel winners from the United States, more than 100 have been immigrants.Adil Najam, Dean, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.