At long last, someone in a position to do something has admitted that scholars/teachers jetting around to conferences is morally questionable (not least because today's information technologies allow far more collaboration than was possible at conferences even quite recently):
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/us/setting-aside-a-scholarly-get-together-for-the-planets-sake.html?ref=earth&_r=0 It will be interesting to see where this goes. Will it overcome the willful ignorance of so many scholars -- those who think that THEIR work is so vital as to justify conference travel -- that such voluntary behavior is contributing, albeit perhaps in individually small ways, to profound human suffering and death in the future through climate change? Even a tiny contribution to someone else's death seems to call into question conference travel (and most other travel, at least by auto or airplane). I've broached this topic on this list several times over the years, so I realize that it's not likely to get any traction, and that there will be all sorts of excuses for continuing business as usual (“How dare you deny young scholars the right to collaborate” [these are the same young scholars who collaborate 24/7 on their iPhones, etc.]; “Collaborating via video conferencing [etc.] just isn’t the same as talking in person” [but there’s evidence that collaborating remotely can result in more scholarly productivity] – that sort of thing). ISA, APSA and all of the other big academic associations, including those devoted to environmental issues, seem to have conferences as their core business models. They don’t want to change. And we scholars don’t help. We love our conferences, right? And we, like most people, always want to leave it to others, probably people in the future, or governments or corporations, to change things. Of course we don't think about it consciously (so as to avoid guilt, maybe), but our attitude seems to something along the lines of "I teach about environmental solutions, so I don't have to be part of them myself," or, even more powerfully, "My research shows that institutions matter more than individuals, so I can justify living as I do." How many decades more will scholars take these and similar views, and continue to set the wrong example? I wonder what our students, particularly those who study climate change, think each time we jet off to a conference? The word “hypocrite” instantly comes to mind. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
