Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
viewed as being only economic in nature. To borrow again from
William Sullivan, such a view reflects a wholly technical understanding
of what the academic professionals who are employed
by these colleges are about. This understanding is false. As I have
demonstrated in this chapter, at least some of these professionals
were and are about much more than this. They were and are about
the pursuit of public work, ends, and ideals that are not only economic
but also political, environmental, and cultural in nature.
In The Sociological Imagination, which was published in 1959, C.
Wright Mills argued that the “educational and the political role of
social science in a democracy is to help cultivate and sustain publics
and individuals that are able to develop, to live with, and to act upon
adequate definitions of personal and social realities.” In my work of
reconstructing a previously obscured tradition of public scholarship
in land-grant colleges of agriculture, I am beginning to see why and
how scholars in a variety of academic fields—including the natural
as well as social sciences—have taken up this nontechnical educational
and political role in their proactive, face-to-face engagement
in public work. But I am also beginning to see what scholars are up
against as they attempt to sustain this tradition into the future. Given
the seemingly overwhelming power of the many disincentives and
challenges they face, is there any real hope of success? 21
With respect to this question, listen to Nick Jordan, a natural
scientist who is a full professor in the Department of Agronomy
and Plant Genetics at the University of Minnesota. In response to
a question I asked him about what he and other public scholars
are up against in Minnesota, he told me that “the most important
challenge is that there is a rapid decline in public support for what
we’re doing. It’s just very clear that we’re not getting an adequate
base of financial support for what we do here.” He went on to speak
of a “managed decline” in his college, the official name of which is
the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences. In
his view, this decline is a result of the “obsolescent story” his college
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21 C. W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press,
1959), 192.