[On September
17th, 2011 the Occupy Wall
Street protests began in lower Manhattan. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied
that event and four other mass protests, leading up to this special weekend
post on lessons from an inspiring mass protest in the age of Trump.]
Thanks to the Scholars Strategy Network (for which I’m a Boston Chapter co-leader) and
their connection to Boston
March for Science organizer Ashley Ciulla, I was able to record a video for the
March’s participants, speak at an SSN event the night before, and attend the March itself on April 22nd,
2017 at Boston Common. Here are three takeaways from that inspiring and
important protest:
1)
Science and Activism: In the initial stages of
conversation about the national
(Washington) March for Science, of which the Boston March was an off-shoot,
a number of scientists
expressed concerns about being perceived or defined in any way as partisan
activists. I understand those concerns, but as I argued in my recorded video,
the truth is that American naturalists and scientists have pursued concurrent
and interconnected public activisms throughout our history. Moreover, those
activisms have never been, and I would argue are not now, partisan or political
in any narrow sense; instead, these are public arguments for the roles that
knowledge and investigation can play in support of the common good. While I
don’t believe all scientists have to link their research to such collective
arguments, I think each and every one has the right to do so, and that the more
who do, the stronger our society will be. I felt that strength at the March for
Science to be sure.
2)
Scientific Community: I also felt there the
perhaps underrated importance of science as a communal endeavor. That is, our
narratives of science sometimes portray it—as I wrote in this
post on our images of individual inventors—as the solitary pursuit of
iconoclastic geniuses. Such individuals certainly have always played a role,
but, as I argued in that post, any lasting and meaningful scientific invention
or innovation takes a village to complete and sustain. The Boston March for
Science featured a number
of interesting speakers who shared a wide variety of perspectives and
experiences, but a central thread across all of the speeches that I had the
chance to hear was the importance of the scientific and social communities in
which these individuals had pursued their work. And the March itself, of
course, embodied another such inspirational scientific and social community,
one only temporarily gathered in the same physical space but committed to a
more enduring sense of solidarity among all the participants and their
respective institutions and cohorts.
3)
Supporting Science: That communal spirit
certainly offers one important way in which we can all support scientists and
their work. But equally vital, and a significant part of the motivation for
holding a March for Science in 2017, is public, governmental support for the
sciences. I don’t imagine I need to tell any readers of this blog about the
deep, distressing cuts
to scientific funding in President Trump’s first budget—most of them just
proposed at this point, making it all the more important to highlight and
challenge them. But it’s also important that we confront the gradually
eroding public consensus on the value (and unfortunately even
the most basic truths) of scientific inquiry and knowledge, a long-term
trend that predates Donald Trump and can’t be addressed simply by resisting
those proposed budget cuts. The March for Science participants were, of course,
a self-selected group of those who do believe in and support the sciences;
finding ways to broaden and deepen those attitudes as we move forward must be a
vital goal for all of us.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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