In columns published in the Austin American-Statesman, prominent scholars—a poet, philosopher, neurobiologist, economist, theater historian, pharmacologist and geologist—explore the ways their work in science, humanities and the arts can make the leap into society. The ultimate goal is to make it so it doesn’t take a leap to get there. Perhaps not even a step. It’s just there, a part of society. “How do you organize an academic institution and its vast intellectual resources and position it in relationship to the community to produce the most rigorous and useful knowledge?” Cherwitz asked. The idea is to develop successful models of "public scholarship" that are valued by the university, provide incentives for faculty to engage in research that contributes to the community and can be sustained over time. Cherwitz said that one of the major issues posed by the series is: How can we best leverage academic knowledge for social good? How might we ideally configure ourselves institutionally and in relationship to the various sectors of society to accomplish this objective? “We must avoid the disciplinary tendency to reduce an issue or problem to a single perspective or to one answer,” he said. “Complex social problems comprise historical, scientific, ethical, political and many other kinds of considerations.” Cherwitz cited the work of Professor R. Adron Harris as an example. Harris, director of the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research, is a neurobiologist investigating how alcohol changes the brain.
A lot of people have a vested interest in addiction research, Cherwitz said, from policy makers to social service providers, and including members of the community who may only view addiction in moral and religious terms. “He (Harris) and his colleagues have discovered evidence suggesting that addiction is reflected in chemical processes; yet such knowledge doesn’t always translate into increased funding or the ability of science to influence and shape public and personal policies,” Cherwitz said. “There is pushback from those who view addiction purely as an issue of moral accountability, and they somehow portray this as opposition to the findings of Harris’ research rather than recognizing that these are different perspectives on the same issue. “If we really wish to tackle the issue of addiction or any other complex problem and if the goal is to conduct research that meets the highest academic standards and also has maximum social impact, then all stakeholders must be at the table—and that means those representing different academic disciplines and the multiple sectors of society.” This is what contributors to the Academic Engagement series are contemplating. It is also the goal of the larger IE initiative: to find ways to harness, integrate and productively use intellectual energy and talent, wherever it is located, in order to promote academic, cultural, political, social and economic change—to educate “citizen-scholars.”
Working together in action seminars, scientists, humanists, social scientists and artists from higher education and people from the public and private sectors could move toward solving some of society’s most vexing problems, Cherwitz said. “For this to happen, however, it may be necessary to re-engineer the university’s academic geography (how knowledge is organized and delivered), alter the faculty reward system and re-imagine the university’s relationship to the society of which it is a part,” he said. The challenges—institutionally and culturally—of achieving such a thing are substantial, but so is the payoff, Cherwitz said. “Yet, in view of the critical mass of intellectually talented and socially committed UT faculty, as well as the desire for increased accountability, I remain optimistic,” he said. Related SitesIntellectual Entrepreneurshp Program
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