Dear Maiken, Before you publish your results, you might like to read through some of the recent articles posted by Stanley Fish at http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com. Professor Fish has given a lot of thought to the appropriateness and boundaries of political activism as they affect Faculty in institutions of higher learning. If I've followed his arguments correctly, then basically he believes that activism and advocacy belong in the private realm, and should not intrude in the public classroom. Our duty as citizens is to advocate for what we believe to be true; our duty, and contractual responsibility, as science educators is to present the scientific method, to show how it has been applied in our specific discipline, and to present the ongoing dabate over interpretations of results. If we stray from this path, and focus only on the results that our private activism "tells us" are true, then we become indoctrinators, not educators. It is a fine line, but an important one, and I wish you the ! best in your attempts to walk it.
Ivan ------------------------------------------------------- Ivan P. Edwards, PhD, Research Fellow, University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment, G540b Dana Building, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1041 Phone: (734) 763-8003 ________________________________________ From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Maiken Winter [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 1:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [ECOLOG-L] One more thought on scientists and action Dear Ecologgers, I greatly enjoyed the discussions last week. I did note, however, that people who feel strongly opposed to what I am saying feel a lot more compelled to comment by private email than those that agree (which - based on the survey - greatly outnumber those that oppose). I believe this might be a general problem. I often have the feeling that those who know the facts well and understand an issue might already feel "sanctioned" by doing so, and might not feel the responsibility and urgency to speak up themselves, even though they know it should be done. It is important to understand, I think, that knowing does not help if we do not transfer that knowledge to others. Of course, teaching helps, but here we mostly affect a selected minority of the public. And the best teachers I have had are those who do what they talk about, or they just demonstrate hypocrisy and become not very motivating raw models. I am off to the climate conference in Copenhagen for the week: http://climatecongress.ku.dk/ - several thousand climate scientists will converge to discuss the latest science on climate change. Might be a worthwhile event to follow for those of you interested. Thanks again for all your input. The results of my survey will be posted within a few weeks. Maiken
