[Last week, I
had the chance to attend a national meeting of the Scholars Strategy Network, a
vital public scholarly organization of which I’ve been a
Member for almost four years. So this week I wanted to share a few sides to
my work with SSN, leading up to this weekend post on that national meeting and
SSN’s expanding role in Trump’s America!]
On three
questions about the Scholars Strategy Network that the leadership summit helped
clarify for me.
1)
Who: Literally every person I met or heard from
at the summit was impressive and inspiring, but I’ll focus here on three who
reflect the event and organization’s breadth and depth: Lee Badgett,
a Professor of Economics at
UMass Amherst whose book The Public Professor: How to
Use Your Research to Change the World (2016) shot to the top of my
reading list after meeting her; Heide
Castañeda, an Associate
Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida who is helping
get a Tampa SSN chapter off and running (it’ll be our first in
Florida!); and Natasha
Perez, Chief of Staff for Massachusetts
State Senate President Stan Rosenberg. I could really have highlighted any
three attendees and speakers here, but Lee, Heide, and Natasha each offered
unique and vital perspectives at the summit and together reflect our
organizational efforts and strengths on many levels.
2)
Why: At the start of the summit, SSN Executive
Director Avi Green shared three 2017 objectives for the organization: to
communicate the impacts of current national and state policy shifts; to
strengthen our state/regional chapters and expand their efforts; and to defend
democracy. Those three goals certainly reflect the different (if always interconnected)
kinds of political, regional, and scholarly work that SSN features and
advances. But honestly, my answer to why SSN does the work it does, and why
that work matters, would be even simpler and more overarching still: because
scholarly voices are needed in our conversations and communities, at every
level and in every way; and because such voices are stronger and more
effective, and such work more possible and happier, when they’re part of a
community. I felt all of that at the summit very fully.
3)
What’s Next: For me, the most immediate next
step will be taking on more of a leadership role in the Boston SSN chapter.
Professors Erin
O’Brien and Rachael Cobb
have done phenomenal work leading the chapter for many years now, and I’m very
excited to join those efforts and help the chapter move forward in many ways
(and if you’re a Massachusetts or New England scholar reading this, please let
me know if you’d like to be part of those efforts!). But of course, all of us
at SSN, like all of us in America, are wondering about what’s next for the
nation—during the summit alone, the House passed the abomination that is the
AHCA and Trump signed the unconstitutional horror that is his “religious
liberty” Executive Order. I can’t pretend to know what’s next on that broadest
level—and the summit featured its share of understandable pessimism among the
more inspiring and activist perspectives—but I know I feel better prepared to
respond to and help shape it as a part of SSN.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Thoughts on SSN, or other organizations or efforts you’d highlight?
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