The recent student protests against the war in Gaza reminded all of us that being a member of the academic community requires us to reflect upon our role in society. In Switzerland, the university occupations (see SwissInfo) led to several open letter-type reactions from academic staff, either supporting the protests or on the contrary, recalling that scientists should abstain from activism. This brought about interesting debates about why following a climate strike is almost universally acceptable for scientists, but supporting the recent student protest is much more controversial.
I tend to not define my work as being “engaged” – even if I clearly express my opinion in public debates related to water, e.g. in the context of hydropower production and environmental protection (an example in french here). Or if I use inclusive language in teaching, which is still not not looked upon favorably by all political actors in Switzerland. Compared to the engagement of some of my colleagues e.g. in feminist geography or in climate sciences, this is arguably low-level.
In this context, I recently followed the public talk (in French, on YouTube) by Augustin Fragnière, adjunct director of the Sustainability Competence Center of University of Lausanne on their reflections about “engaged research” of academics. This talk was very beneficial to renew my own reflections and I strongly recommend to dive in their 2022 synthesis report for any further reading.
How to define public engagement?
We might first want to define what we mean by “public engagement” or “engaged researcher”: a relatively wide definition is the one presented in the aforementioned talk as being a public action that conveys normative content. My own calls to consider ecological impacts in hydropower development would thereby be seen as being engaged. This definition, which I adopt here, goes beyond science communication (as e.g. in the recent EGU call for public engagement grants) and is narrower than the one adopted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the publisher of Science) who frames public engagement with science (PES) as “intentional, meaningful interactions that provide opportunities for mutual learning between scientists and members of the public”, with the goal to “increase familiarity with a breadth of perspectives, frames, and worldviews” (for literature on PES in science communication, see e.g. Ghannam & Dudo, 2022).
Should we be engaged scientists?
In A. Fragnière’s talk, we were reminded that universities explicitly enact, in their regulations, their role regarding contributions to public debate (e.g. article 1 of the Act of the University of Lausanne). A certain level of engagement is formally expected in most academic contexts.
Why do we (or the general public) even question if academics should be engaged? As. A. Fragnière framed it, this might be related to a mixing of science being objective with the misconception that science should be neutral or value-free; our work is obviously never value-free: even if our work focuses e.g. on the far distant past, we typically still apply our equality, diversity and inclusion standards in our research and teaching. Next, A. Fragnière pointed out that public engagement might be perceived as a misuse of our status as researchers, we could potentially mix scientific results and personal opinions or convey statements that are against scientific consensus (which would obviously be against our duty of diligence).
The clear recommendation is transparency in our public actions, to transparently communicate our values and to clearly state our role as expert, as researcher or as citizen. This is arguably challenging – the limits between our domain of expertise and our general knowledge as researchers and teachers is fuzzy. And our training in public action is most often limited. This should not refrain us from engaging with the public (and making normative statements!), but on the contrary stimulate us to learn from more experienced peers.
Further reading: The Ethic Commision of the French CNRS, COMETS, published their viewpoint on public engagement of researchers, see here. In their English text, they translate the french “engagement public” by ” public advocacy of researchers” and they specify that: “It [public advocacy of researchers] “is therefore both wider than the classical understanding of ‘advocacy’ and different from what is referred to as ‘public engagement’ in English-speaking countries, a commonly required academic activity that has already been widely discussed and documented” (COMETS, 2023).
Bettina Schaefli
The post has been updated on 4 June by B. Schaefli, by adding the further reading paragraph: “Further reading: The Ethic Commision of the French CNRS, COMETS, published their viewpoint on public engagement of researchers, see here. In their English text, they translate the french “engagement public” by ” public advocacy of researchers” and they specify that: “It [public advocacy of researchers] “is therefore both wider than the classical understanding of ‘advocacy’ and different from what is referred to as ‘public engagement’ in English-speaking countries, a commonly required academic activity that has already been widely discussed and documented” (COMETS, 2023).”