Academics and Policy
Earlier today, I published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled "Scholar on the Sidelines." In it I noted that aside from economists and scientists, very few academics have been appointed to policy positions in the Obama administration. The 2008 TRIP poll of 2,700 international relations scholars shows that of the twenty five most influential scholars, only three have ever held policy positions. This is quite different from a few decades ago. I said the fault for this gap lies with the academy rather than the administration, as scholars pay less attention to how their work relations to the policy world, and advancement comes faster for those who develop mathematical models, new methodologies and theories that are unintelligible to policy makers. The resulting vacuum is filled by the more than 1,200 think tanks in the US which house experts ready to comment with a bias that reflects their founders and funders. I said that the withdrawal of of the academy is a loss for our democratic processes.
I received more positive responses to this op-ed than almost any I have written. But some said that I was wrong to blame only the academy. They argued that the political process has become too centralized in Washington and that think tanks house experts who not only tailor their writings to the political winds of the day, but consist of people who are simply ladies and gentlemen in waiting for political favor in the Washington court of the day. I would be curious to know whether others think the problem is more with the academy or with the political process.
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This is an issue I hadn't thought about at all, and in considering it now, I don't think it's really any fault of academics. I think it's much more a question of political acumen and practical experience. For example, Obama wanted Daschle for the position that is now covered by Sebelius with Nancy-Ann DeParle. Sebelius would bring administrative leadership to the equation, and DeParle would bring expertise as a health industry insider. Neither have the Congressional connections of Daschle, but together they are a formidable duo that may have no trouble overcoming that deficit, and the fact that Obama has two major people on the health question indicates the importance of getting it right this time around.
I doubt there's anyone in academia who would be able to offer what these nominees do, insofar as being the point person/people. Certainly academia can provide a wealth of advisors, but the people who actually call the shots need more bona fides than most academics can provide, in my opinion, so I guess if they're to be faulted for anything, it would be not being more politically involved (as Lawrence Summers is, for example). I guess I agree with you.
Thank you, neoprimordial. You just illustrated my point exactly.
As long as academics are unwilling to call out the power game, who really cares what they think?
Did you hear what he just wrote there, Joe?
When it comes down to it, noone cares what academics think. Except insofar as it will advance their agenda.
Think long and hard, Joe, about whether that is what you want to call progress.
I think the problem is tenure. It insulates academics from the real world by rendering them immune to the consequences of their ideas.
More here:
http://talentedearthquake.blogspot.com/2009/04/academics-and-policy-joseph-nye-notes.html
I think the problem is tenure: it insulates academics from the real world by making them immune to the consequences of their actions. More here:
http://talentedearthquake.blogspot.com/2009/04/academics-and-policy-joseph-nye-notes.html
Dear Joseph Nye:
You say:
"I would be curious to know whether others think the problem is more with the academy or with the political process."
And the answer is:
"...the more than 1,200 think tanks in the US which house experts ready to comment with a bias that reflects their founders and funders."
The WHITE HOUSE is staffed by sycophants, lapdogs, predators.
The hiring criteria are based on anticipated loyalty,track record, and ability to deceive the public.
The underlying mantra is: we know the truth won't set them (MAIN STREET) free, but it's easier to tell them (MAIN STREET) that they
are going to a shower than going to a gas chamber.
As usual, the government has to make room for the corporations to put their people in, just like they agreed when corporations decided to give campaign financing to both candidates. There is no room for too many academics in the U.S. government. This goes for both Republican and Democratic presidents. Both of those parties work for their corporate sponsors, and not for the people. If they did work for the people, the government would be full of academics actually trying to solve the people's problems.
Personally, I see the problem w/ us... the people, the voters. We seem to be more interested in short term fixes rather than long term solutions.... more interested in getting legislation passed than developing good policy. Because academics don't necessarily have the same concerns as we... they do seem (to some) to be out of touch, irrelevant to the political process.
"Those who can, do - those who can't, teach" - Anon
It is funny for me to make the parallel between what Mr. Nye is saying about the scholars/politics situation in USA and the same subject in Romania.
We had a group of people chosen by the Presidency as advisers. All of them of strong academic background. As Romanians have a problem with scholars (ivory tower, had to have connections with the Communist Party and the oppressive secret services before 1989, dreaming away from reality) most of them stepped back and some got involved directly in policy as party members losing in this way their unbiased opinion. We had them and we scared them away. You do not have them but they do not come. Funny! And we both need them desperately.
Why we need them? For the technicalities. For they are more susceptible to stick to the truth of their field than to the winds of popular or political opinions. For most of the decisions both USA and Romania made lately are based more on "popular truths" than on scientifically proven theories. For it is better to act based on reason than on symbols and emotions.
Interesting... as I personally don't know much about Romanian politics. I also agree w/ your last paragraph and wish we the voters would become less susceptible to the "winds of popular or political opinion"... and more interested in good policy.
As an English professor--for whatever THAT is worth!--I think Nye's exactly right. Obama is to be praised for choosing men and women of tremendous proven practical ability in the trenches--from Summers to Hillary Clinton to Rahm Emmanuel. For decades, the Democratic Party has had to drag around a constituency of Boomer professors who have been almost as heavy an albatross as the teacher's union itself. Thank God Obama is saying good-bye to all that, along with the childish things of the Boomer generation in general--from Bill Clinton's priapism to Bush's idiotic bravado. All Obama cares about is solving problems effectively. His greatest virtue, like FDR's, is his sheer, classic American pragmatism. This drives Daily Kos types up the wall, because they have been shaped by the crazed pursuit of "moral purity" in academce, a "gotcha" game the professors and their star pupils get egotistically addicted to for life. Even sex may not be as big a rush as self-righteousness. Obama's a throwback to Justice Holmes, and James. What sane person cares about "reasons," compared to results? Bill Clinton was a president without principles because he was a poll-driven opportunist, Slick Willy. Obama is a president without principles, because he has something much better than principles: GOALS. Like FDR, he's happy to shift around until he finds the means that work. No wonder the people, rather than the professors, are so pleased with him, being instinctive pragmatists with goals rather than principles themselves.
VERY well said!
You really believe that President Obama is a man without principles???? Interesting...
How you could read that whole paragraph and focus on a single, literally true assertion that is wildly out of context, is beyond me.
To the extent that the academy rationalizes power politics for its favored causes, it sets itself up to be isolate. If governance in liberal democracies is about who has the power rather that what are more reasoned considerations of policy - which can only happen in a process where genuinely open-ended reasoned discussion trumps calculations for power - then academics really need to ask themselves, "Who cares what academics think?"
If it's really about the power rather than more thoughtful consideration of its wiser use, more broadly, and not to defend or promote more narrow ideological considerations of the use of power, who really cares what thinkers think. When power politics is rationalized as worthy in-and-of-itself to further favored causes, don't the opinions of professional thinkers become somewhat irrelevant?
Perhaps that is something the academy should think about the next time it rallies and cheerleads the very kinds of power games that would otherwise make it a relevant institution.
The only way the academy is relevant is if more open-ended engagement and debate trump power. But, sad to say, that is not how far too many in the academy are behaving today, as long as it looks to advance their favored caused.
It's a bargain that the academy should think long and hard about, I would say.
Ben Sutherland
http://benfrankln.blogspot.com/
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