DEFINING PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Nicholas Kristof (Reference Kristof2014) condemns professors, particularly political scientists, for hiding behind a wall of obscurity and failing to engage the public sphere. In a sobering admonition, he wrote, “In other words, to be a scholar is, often, to be irrelevant.” At first glance, the Kristof piece is enough to push any graduate student to the brink of an existential crisis. Few people define their career path as a journey of irrelevance. However, the statement raises important questions: “How do we define relevance? And to whom?” Public scholars have the opportunity to define relevance in myriad ways, from shaping decisions made by policy makers to inspiring bright undergraduates to pursue a career in public service. At its core, political science rests on the study of power and conflict. It stands to reason, then, that a discipline built on examining power should promote greater understanding of how those resources are distributed.

However, the value of scholarly engagement shouldn’t be confined to the public acts that Kristof mentions. Public engagement happens when producers of documentaries rely on scholars for advice about content and when scholars are called on to testify at hearings about poverty interventions. Indeed, public engagement occurs even when professors present their research to alumni gatherings attended by business executives, community organizers, development professionals, and retirees. ^{Footnote 1}

In 2005, I was invited to give a talk to alumni that addressed some aspect of my work. It was a broad charge with one caveat: make it interesting. I obsessed over a topic that would be conducive to a catchy title that would draw people into my session. I chose to discuss the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 and its relevance to contemporary debates over protecting the franchise. I discussed the Act’s extensions that protected language minorities and the growing demographic changes that elevated their importance. I also discussed how the appointment of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States might foretell a shift in the Supreme Court’s support of the VRA, given his prior efforts in the US Department of Justice to require proof of intent in discrimination claims. Attendees were shocked to learn that despite the popularity of the phrase, “right to vote,” the Constitution does not provide an affirmative right to vote. Often, the factual information that we take for granted as scholars can offer important insights for nonspecialists.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2013: one of the attendees, now a journalist, asked if I would pen a piece on the practical implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder (Brown-Dean 2013a). In 2015, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies commissioned four political scientists—Khalilah L. Brown-Dean, Zoltan Hajnal, Christina Rivers, and Ismail White—to author “50 Years of the Voting Rights Act: The State of Race in Politics” (Brown-Dean, Hajnal, Rivers, and White Reference Brown-Dean, Hajnal, Rivers and White2015). The report examines the impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on key areas such as voter registration, turnout, racially polarized voting, office holding, and policy responsiveness. Our efforts to address key areas of American electoral behavior generated discussion among journalists, policymakers, and civil rights leaders such as Representative John Lewis and Martin Luther King III. Ismail White and I traveled to Selma, Alabama, to present the report and participate in a panel discussion during the 50th anniversary commemoration of the historic Bloody Sunday March. There, at the base of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, we were reminded of the enormous potential of public scholarship.

Public scholarship should satisfy a question that applies equally to traditional scholarship: So what? Scholars possess a unique skill set to address this question based on knowledge of historical trends and an awareness of future concerns. Members of our profession have long been involved in these types of activities. The issue, however, rests on how we classify this work. Does public engagement count as scholarship or service?

It’s important to push back on the notion that the goal of public engagement is to churn out people who will offer opinions on any issue that comes along. Effective public scholars should be specialists who have the ability to articulate their expertise in generalist terms. This does not require that one be able to speak with deep specificity about the finer points of stop-gap funding in Congress—quite the contrary. There is, however, an inherent danger in scholars who present themselves as experts on all things remotely political. Good public scholars recognize the limits of their expertise while deploying the analytical rigor necessary to make sense of a complicated political world. Scholarship represents a tangible expression of knowledge grounded in a systematic exploration of information. Traditional scholarship in political science focuses on both process (e.g., skills development) and product (e.g., books and peer-reviewed articles); the same should be true for public scholarship. There is a need for scholars who can quickly respond to the topics of the day, but those responses are strengthened when they can be connected to long-standing questions in political science regarding power, conflict, justice, and fairness. The essence of public engagement is reflected in its connection to our teaching and scholarship. A broader vision of political science’s public engagement should strive to move beyond the “talking-head” pontification that often dominates the public sphere. What sets a scholarly blog apart from an eager citizen with an opinion is a combination of both analytical rigor and factual awareness.

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND THE POLITICS OF INVISIBILITY

The value of the life of the mind has always stretched beyond the individual. The task is to determine how our preoccupation with thinking is connected to the lived and imagined experiences of others. The rise to prominence of political science’s own Melissa Harris-Perry is a useful example of how we might bridge the gap between the ivory tower and the public square. In a brilliant article in The Atlantic, Ta-Nehesi Coates takes Dylan Byers to task for his failure to recognize how Harris-Perry helped to redefine what it means to be a public intellectual. Coates’s piece alludes to an important consideration that I hope our profession will take seriously: the tendency of uses for public scholarship to replicate many of the biases that are embedded within the broader academy.

Although many claim that public scholarship promotes diverse voices, that diversity should be qualified (Drezner Reference Drezner2008)(http://www.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2008/05/13/blogs_public_intellectuals_and_the_academy.). Public engagement has the opportunity to both amplify new voices and deepen our understanding of communities that often are overlooked by traditional modes of inquiry. Increasing public engagement among scholars who are members of and/or conduct research on underrepresented communities in American society is an important way to substantiate the discipline’s relevance beyond the academy. Again, this is where Kristof’s critique misses the point. There already is a strong cadre of scholars who have long been doing exactly what he demands. ^{Footnote 2} For some, public engagement is a way to reconcile an internal calling to connect their scholarship to real-world problems. Others are drawn into public engagement by departments, universities, and well-intentioned community organizations eager to diversify their image and compensate for underrepresentation. How do we balance the call for public engagement against the practical demands of rigid tenure standards, which rarely allow for work that surpasses traditional markers of productivity? Does public engagement for underrepresented scholars become yet another unrequited time demand to combat invisibility, or is it viewed as a valued contribution? ^{Footnote 3} Many of us jokingly refer to the months of February and March as the “high season.” Government agencies and local elementary schools all clamor for speakers at Women’s History Month and Black History Month events. APSA’s endorsement of increased public engagement must speak directly to the reality that service demands already are unevenly distributed. ^{Footnote 4}

APSA SUPPORT

This article suggests that APSA pursue a two-pronged approach that focuses on internal development and external dissemination. To that end, I offer the following suggestions.