State/Gown relations

I met a guy from the University of Georgia over Christmas vacation, a humanities professor. He said that when he joined the university some years ago -- and this is still a common practice there -- they put him on a bus with other new hires and took them around the state to introduce them to people.

Just now, I was reading an article about weather volatility -- basically how global warming will make the incidence of extreme weather events rise. Not just warm weather, but extreme cold snaps too. And, thought the thesis makes sense, and it is supported by data and well-grounded principles, this is the kind of thing that climate change skeptics eat for breakfast. Here's what they say: "See, the ivory-tower liberals don't really know anything, they just want to make you get out of your truck and into a little Japanese car because they hate America. They'll twist their story around however they need to."

But part of the problem here is that the universities are so distant from red counties and don't make much of an effort to bridge that gap. And because university business models don't encourage behavior that would bridge it, like sending faculty or even grad students out to rural high schools or chambers of commerce to give talks about what they do and the high-level state of their fields.

This is, of course, more easily said than remedied. The fact is that professors and future professors are competing with people in Stockholm and Beijing and Canberra to produce research that moves the ball forward in their fields.  Building presentations for general audiences is really the work of PBS and National Geographic etc. But they also lack effective footsoldiers and advocates, as they are squeezed for cash and need to focus on their own core demographics to survive.

But it is work that somebody should be doing. It is, frankly, the function of the pubic sector to do this kind of work that markets do poorly.