Andy Hoffman reflects on purpose and why we need engaged scholars now more than ever
We are proud to present an adapted excerpt from The Engaged Scholar: Expanding the Impact of Academic Research in Today’s World» by Andrew J. Hoffman.
Why did you choose to become a professor?
When I feel myself losing track of the purpose or meaning behind my work, I return to this simple question. And my answer is equally simple – I want my research, teaching, and outreach to have a positive imprint on the world around me. Citation counts, A-level publications, and an h-index pale in comparison to that simple outcome.
Yet our reward systems elevate these metrics and they don’t come close to capturing my deeper purpose. So, that leaves it to me to decide what is valuable and important in my academic pursuits. I know that that kind of independence is hard to assert, especially when you are early in your academic career. But as you advance, you will have more freedom to exercise your independence. For me, I keep in mind the challenge from Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State marine ecologist and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), that academic scholars must abide by “scientists’ social contract” – that they have an obligation to provide a service to society, to give value for the money provided by public funding, government grants, and tuition revenue.[1]It is an obligation that is born out of both a societal need for the expertise that academics possess and a recognition of the responsibilities that come with the privileged life that academics lead.
I am writing this at a particularly precarious time. The Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on our lives and our livelihoods. People are suffering and society needs answers. Yet many people are turning away from science, distrusting its conclusions and its motivations, and even questioning its assessment that the virus is real. This is happening because we are now immersed in an array of confusing and conflicting messages that question facts, blur the line between opinion and fact, and dismiss formerly respected sources of information as merely political interests pushing a partisan agenda. This, according to the RAND Corporation, is the existential crisis of our time.[2] If we do not improve the scientific literacy of our public and political discourse, how can we make sense of the challenging issues we face? You can’t set policy or make informed decisions about nanotechnology, stem-cell research, nuclear power, climate change, vaccines and autism, genetically modified organisms, endocrine disruption, gun violence, or Covid-19 if you do not agree on a common set of facts to ground the conversation.
To my mind, this existential crisis lays the gauntlet at the door of the Academy. If academic scholars do not provide the kind of scientifically grounded knowledge that society needs, who will? But this societal crisis is happening at a time when the Academy is facing a crisis of its own. Academic research is becoming increasingly irrelevant as the work becomes too insular, the language too opaque, the journals too inaccessible and the cultural norms of disciplinary boundaries too balkanized. We need to break out of our siloed research communities and bring our work to a world that needs it. In the words of former University of Texas at Austin President Larry Faulkner: “The antidote to irrelevance is engagement of the university with the real needs and aspirations of the supporting society.”[3]
is a call to make that path toward public engagement more acceptable and legitimate for those who do it; to enlarge the tent to be inclusive of multiple ways that one enacts the role of academic scholar in today's world.
A new generation of scholars is emerging into the field with a strong desire to make a difference in the real world. This book is for them in particular. Whether they are new PhD students just entering their degree programs, young professors just starting their careers, or mid-career professors who have begun to question the purpose behind their work, my hope is to inspire a career path rooted in rigorous research but expanded with the goal of relevant impact on practice within society. Even seasoned senior professors may find some value in these pages. It is never too late to consider the measure of your life’s work based on meaning and purpose instead of status, however defined.
Public engagement has been the goal throughout my academic career. I study environmental issues because I care about preserving and protecting our natural world. I earned a joint doctoral degree between the schools of business and engineering and was held to that goal by a committee of advisors that included business school professors who asked about the theoretical rigor of my work, and engineering professors who kept asking “what’s the point?” For me, the point is that I want to see the impact of my work in the thoughts, values, and behaviors of those I reach in business, policy, and society. My work stands on the shoulders of the social theorists who came before me. But I use that theoretical knowledge to understand and change the empirical world, and not setting a priority to use the empirical world to contribute to theory within the academic literature. And as I have advanced in my career, the balance of my portfolio slowly shifted in its emphasis from academic to public audiences. I still write academic papers, but I write more books intended to span academic and lay audiences. I take my work to more public audiences through practitioner journals, web essays, radio interviews, and talks at business, government, and non-profit conferences. I’ll speak to high school students, senior citizens, local community groups.
I feel like I am fulfilling my purpose when someone approaches me after one of my talks to say that I changed the way they thought about an issue, or an executive tells me that I provided tools that can help them in their job today. I have the same feeling when my books appear in syllabi around the world or are assigned as required summer reading for incoming freshmen. Twice I have been invited to give a freshman convocation address and the satisfaction I feel in reaching those young minds far exceeds anything I have felt in reaching my academic peers in the seminar room.
It is never too late to consider the measure of your life’s work based on meaning and purpose instead of status, however defined.
The role of full professor is a rare and wonderful gift. Should we not use that gift to make a real and lasting difference in the world? Should we not learn new skills and models for how to play a new role, and see our careers in the long arc that leads to that possibility? The seeds for that possibility must be planted early. One cannot shunt all interest in engagement aside for the 15 to 20 years it takes to get a PhD, tenure, and promotion to full professor, and then expect to suddenly reignite the passion. We must cultivate that passion while recognizing the expectations and demands of the institutions in which we live and work. Then, when we are ready, we will have found the voice to contribute to society at a time when society most certainly needs us.
Now, more than ever, we need engaged scholars who can bring their expertise to the world, informing public and political discourse on the great challenges of our day. For this to happen, we need a more socially literate scientific community to engage a more scientifically literate public. We need scientists who can be effective communicators of what science does, how it does it, what it tells us, and what it means. We need scholars who can take complex issues and ideas and make them understandable to all demographics, young and old, poor and affluent, liberal and conservative. I hope this book stirs enough scholars to begin, or affirm, their journey toward that goal and in so doing make a difference in the world.
Start exploring The Engaged Scholar »
Notes
[1] J. Lubchenco, “Entering the century of the environment: A new social contract for science,” Science, 1998, 279(5350): 491-497; Lubchenco, “Delivering on science’s social contract,” Michigan Journal of Sustainability, Volume 5, Issue 1, 2017.
[2] J. Kavanagh and M. Rich, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018).
[3] R. Cherwitz, "Toward entrepreneurial universities for the 21st century," Stanford Social Innovation Review, March 5, 2012.
Comments