Understandings of Science Advocacy can Strengthen it

by: fernando tormos-aponte

Back in January, I reached out to scholars and civic leaders with an interest in science-related advocacy. I asked each of them to share their insights about organizing and social movement building so we could put them in the service of strengthening and diversifying science advocacy. We planned to meet in March, and then COVID-19 happened.


Science, advocacy, and the confluence of crises

While we had been working to form a working group for months, the pandemic made this work even more relevant. Many of us realized: winning the fight against this devastating virus would require something that the US had not been doing very well in the recent past—supporting science and its use for the public good. Scientists, uniquely equipped with the tools to stop the spread of this virus, would have to devise ways to defeat the virus while mobilizing to defending against attacks on science. Science activism would have to flourish in the hardest of times.

Science advocates and activists are not alone. The COVID-19 pandemic raised our awareness about the importance of evidence-based policymaking, scientific innovation, and technological advancement. For a moment, scientists elicited the unparalleled attention of US households who sought insights on how to avoid getting infected, how to get tested, and how to seek treatment. Then, the US was forced to reckon with its racist past and present. Together, the COVID-19 pandemic, its disproportionate impact on people of color, and the Black Lives Matter uprising made it clear: science advocacy must both diversify and grow stronger. Further, science must be an explicitly anti-racist endeavor.

The UCS Science Advocacy Working Group seeks to understand the conditions under which science-related advocacy becomes more diversified and politically impactful. We seek to join efforts to promote scientist civic engagement beyond the confines of our now-empty academic institutions. Our words can make a difference, but as the ongoing uprising against police violence reminds us, words are not enough.

Our paths forward

For science to work for the public good, and particularly marginalized sectors of the public, we must seek to bridge theory and practice. The UCS Science Advocacy Working Group is drawing insights on strengthening science advocacy from various fields of study, experiences of organizers and science advocates themselves, and communities engaged in citizen science to identify the pathways by which we enable evidence-based policymaking and science in the service of marginalized communities.

We are developing an organizing strategy brief that draws recommendations for activists from existing literature on movement building, persistence, and political influence as well as from the experiences of organizers, communities, and scientists. This brief also reviews the challenges that scientists may face in advocacy and movement building and opportunities that they can seize to strengthen and diversify science advocacy.

The group is also engaged in ongoing research aimed at understanding how scientists can inform policy making and increase their policy influence. This research includes surveys, interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic work. This month, we are fielding a pre-election survey of members of the UCS Science Network that will help us gain a better understanding of the challenges that they face as they engage in science advocacy, their opinions and perspectives, and the many ways in which they become civically engaged and politically active. If you are a member of the Science Network, keep an eye on your inbox for a link to participate in this survey.

Our working group will work with organizations within the scientific community to expand these research efforts, include more scholars and communities in every step of this work, and to share findings from new and existing research.

The working group is also working to support scientists and organizations during the pandemic and Black Lives Matter uprising through a series of media pieces, including guest posts on the UCS blog. These posts draw from a variety of perspectives and use a social science lens to spotlight and analyze existing science advocacy efforts, discuss equity issues, and share information about resources that scientists can use for their advocacy work.

Below you will find some of our recent writing on these topics:

We look forward to broadening these efforts and deepening our relationships with those who stand to gain from the enactment of a science praxis that seeks to elevate the voices and improve the lives of intersectionally-marginalized groups.

Source: https://blog.ucsusa.org/fernando-tormos-ap...

10 Things That the Scholarly Community Can Do to Stand in Solidarity

by: fernando tormos-aponte

Acknowledge the history

Science has a deeply problematic relationship with race. The dimensions of this history are many, and most remain in operation to this day. Don’t expect your Black colleagues or friends to educate you on this history whenever you deem it necessary to learn about it. They have already written countless studies to help you understand it. Read them. Cite them. Striving for nuanced understanding of race should not entail giving white supremacists a voice or calling for “both sides” to be represented.

Address racism in our workplaces

Is your workplace predominantly white? Is your university and scientific association white-led? Are all of your collaborators white? Beyond well-crafted diversity statements and celebrations of diversity, we need to push leaders to take steps to address the under-representation of Black scientists in the scientific community.

Revise your work

It is not uncommon to read studies or syllabi that only cite and assign male or white authors. Consider how your work is informed by understandings of race.

Refuse to be complicit

Don’t take part in all-male, all-white academic panels. This undermines the legitimacy of your work and perpetuates the notion that people of color do not know about this topic.

Make space for Black leadership

Science advocacy organizations should make space for Black leadership. Black leadership and minority activism matters, particularly for addressing racist violence.

Make space for Black voices

Despite the lack of support for the academic sessions of scholars of color and their scholarship, when race relations dominate the news cycle, white colleagues seem to develop strong opinions about how to address race relations and minority activism. Scholars in the field of Race and Ethnicity in Politics have been doing this research despite the challenges of doing so.

Make space for Black innovation

Scientific innovation is less likely to be recognized as such when it comes from minority scientists.

Support autonomous Black spaces

Our Black colleagues are organizing autonomously. These spaces are important for their efforts to develop their perspective and action plans during these times. They will call on us to support their work, but until they do, we must respect the spaces that they’ve created for themselves.

Invest in Black leadership

Investing in Black leadership does not always mean that you must step down from your leadership positions. White leaders can make space for Black leadership by allocating resources to the development of Black leadership.

Expect dissent

Minorities are not monolithic groups. It may come as a surprise to some, but minority groups do have disagreements on how to best address their oppression. This should not be taken as a sign of weakness or the absence of a clear agenda. Deliberating over distinct perspectives throughout the process of deciding on actions is what democracy looks like. The ability to engage in these deliberations makes efforts to end oppression stronger. Ultimately, agendas for change are weak if they do not rest on a solid foundation of inclusive deliberation.

Source: https://blog.ucsusa.org/fernando-tormos-ap...