This little light of mine: Scholar activism
The moment before you are served up to an audience as the attraction for the next hour is always a stressful time. Worried about whether you will be as cogent and articulate as planned and wondering if the technology will work properly is enough to occupy yourself during the verbal introductions and formalities. But during the last year of speaking engagements, I’ve faced an additional unexpected twinge of nervousness. It happens when the person describing my biography utters the words, “Sara is a scholar-activist.”
As I watch the room and see people shift in their seats, with some academics offering a slight smirk or scowl, I sometimes rethink the decision to amend my online biography to begin in this way. I rise to talk, usually about college affordability, wondering if my credibility has eroded as the phrase was spoken aloud. But I have found that as I move through the talk, as I describe the powerful ways societal inequities have reshaped the role of higher education over the last forty years and how opportunities for students have suffered, I become increasingly convinced again that I want to bear the label.
Scholarly activism is not advocacy. Let me say that again, since in my experience people have trouble hearing this. I am a scholar-activist, but not an advocate. The difference is critical. An advocate begins with a core and guiding goal—not a theory—and pushes for changes to achieve that goal. In contrast, a scholar-activist begins with a set of testable assumptions, subjects these to rigorous research, and once in possession of research findings seeks to translate those findings into action. With much respect to my colleagues working in advocacy, I much prefer the latter role since I often have more unanswered questions than clear goals, prefer to turn to data rather than personal beliefs when thinking through policy options, and find that actions are more effective when guided by research.
But for some reason, despite numerous calls (both internal and external) for more scholars to become engaged in discussions about real life This little light of mine: Scholar activism | Cloaking Inequity:
