Why aren’t US university leaders pushing back against political attack?

Times Higher Education

Paul Basken

February 15 2024

As an expert on one of the US’ most politically perilous topics, Garen Wintemute knows full well that some types of academic work unavoidably require engagement in partisan arenas.

Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Davis, has spent decades investigating gun violence – a subject so emotionally fraught that it has often cost politicians their careers. That spectacle has led many more legislators to just avoid the subject altogether or even to actively suppress it – with the result that research goes unfunded, data on gun sales and usage goes uncollected and the carnage rolls on.

That stark reality long ago left Wintemute among just a handful of academic scientists who kept trying to investigate the realities. His strategies have included lobbying lawmakers and pursuing legal action to force the release of government data. He’s even paid for large amounts of gun-related research out of his own salary.

To Wintemute, there seems no other choice. Studying gun violence is absolutely essential, and confronting the political barriers around it is a necessary part of the job. “I do controversial work. The people in my group do controversial work,” he says.

His stance – that the work of higher education can require an unapologetic confrontation with powerful political forces – isn’t completely unique. However it is a view that is rarely shared – or, at least, rarely enacted – by sector leaders in the US, who tend to confine their political activity largely to a narrow band of lobbying, such as making polite requests for higher budgets.

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