Sociology is centrally concerned with activism, especially in applied contexts. Our social justice focus is misconceived as bias or as an attack to those not used to having history, culture and politics viewed through a critical lens. Sociology is centrally concerned with social transformation. We do not merely observe the world; we aim to challenge existing power structures and to reduce inequity. Having said that, women academics in general are penalised for their work, and the outcomes are even worse for minority sociologists as they seek senior roles. The stakes for minority activist academics is therefore higher, as I will show below.

Threats to activist academics

Threats to activist academics is not new. Scholars have always been persecuted for their intellectual work, but the dangers are intensified when they are doubly targeted for their social identities. Whether it’s the Greek mathematician Hypatia, killed for her religion and philosophy during the Roman Empire, or Turkish academics arrested in recent months for signing a petition (along with other senior sociologists such as Professor İştar Gözaydın), academic work is often perilous in many nations. In liberal democratic nations like Australia and New Zealand, neoliberal economics have impacted on some academics’ willingness to participate in activism. Dr Sandra Grey, a White woman senior academic based at Victoria University of Wellington, writes:

In particular, persistent underfunding, increased workloads, the lack of political allies, elite coherence and a cultural environment which devalues intellectuals while simultaneously elevating instrumentalism and pragmatism have worked together to create marked tensions for academics wanting to ally themselves with activist causes.

Dr Grey took leave during 2011-2012 and 2014-2015 to serve as the National President of the Tertiary Education Union. She argues that the three key activities for activist academics are:

• Day-to-day resistance and challenge;
• critiquing and debating university policy; and
• establishing active networks with activist organisations and/or political elite.

Changes in promotion and tenure negatively impact on activist academics. Yet people of colour, transgender people and other minority academics who occupy multiple marginalised positions have always engaged in protest of the status quo. Under economic pressure, race dynamics may make it easier for White academics to opt in and out of activism. For Indigenous people and other racial minorities, political reality makes activism a necessity for survival in the ivory tower and in everyday life.

Increasingly, minority activist academics in liberal democratic nations are being targeted by hate campaigns that include calls to have them fired, or an onslaught of death threats, for discussing issues of inequity or campaigning against discrimination. This includes Black American sociologists, who have been criticised by their institutions (A/Prof Saida Grundy) or put on forced leave (Professor Johnny Eric Williams), for teaching or publicly commenting on anti-racism. Similarly, women of colour as well as White women have faced public threats on their personal safety for speaking out on social justice issues on their campuses. Otherwise minority women of colour receive abusive responses for trying to make science more inclusive (for example, in the lead up to March for Science). White queer woman academic Roz Ward was suspended by La Trobe University for comments on her personal Facebook account discussing the colonial symbolism of the Australian flag. This was used as an opportunity to defund Safe Schools, the national anti-bullying program she developed, which enhanced the inclusion of LGBTQIA students.

It seems that “academic freedom” only applies to some, especially White academics making sexist, racist, and transphobic comments. In the case of people of colour, White women, and those who belong to multiple minority groups, the threats associated with speaking against discrimination are compounded along racial, gender and other lines.

Academic freedom

Associate Professor Zandria Robinson, a Black woman sociologist, faced intense criticism in 2015 for tweeting about the confederate flag. Rumours circulated that she had been fired as a result, but in reality, she had already made the decision to leave before the controversy. Nevertheless, she says of the incident:

This is clearly an attack on academic freedom and moreover part of a larger coordinated attack against young women of colour, who are amongst the most vulnerable everywhere, the academy included. Whether it’s a Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction or random, innocuous tweets, black women are harassed and strung up to be made examples of in our society. Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, our institutions often allow this; they cannot protect us from attacks in our own departments or universities, so expecting them to defend us unequivocally from outside hate groups is naïve. Inside attacks push Black women out of the academy just like those from the outside…. It’s time for institutions to be courageous and do the things that our society has repeatedly failed to do: protect Black women and the freedom of people of colour to be critical of injustice.

People of colour, White women, and people with disabilities are underrepresented in science (as well as in sociology and other fields), while racial minority women navigate multiple disadvantages. Given this context of discrimination, academics who discuss the negative impact of colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism or other forms of inequality are exercising academic freedom in support of common good for all.

National and state laws of free speech will vary, with some contexts providing no protection of academic freedom (or other human rights), whereas other nations like Australia will legislate against discrimination, but hate speech laws will still be contested. Protesting public talks, publications and materials by people from majority groups who promote discrimination, harassment and hate speech is one recourse to negate inequity. Demonstrations and public discussion of bigotry, however, is not denying academic freedom: it is making academics accountable for the status and influence they enjoy. The former—denouncing inequity and hate speech—promotes awareness of structural discrimination. The latter—fuelling harassment—sustains the status quo that makes discrimination possible.

Professor Tressie McMillan Cottom, a Black woman sociologist, has shown how dual academic forces lead to poor management of public harassment following from social media blow-ups. On the one hand, academic institutions are conservative and have poor frameworks for understanding and responding to social media. On the other hand, these same institutions promote, invest in, and encourage public scholarship. Some forms of public engagement are associated with greater prestige. Nevertheless, she encourages institutions to consider whether they truly understand the value of social media to public scholarship. If so, does policy adequately cover the “blurring” between professional and personal lines resulting from public scholarship? Professor McMillan Cottom challenges institutions to reflect on whether they are the first line of defence for staff under threat from public abuse. If not, why might this be the case? Are polices, protocols and support mechanisms satisfactory? What legal, mental health counselling and other resources are available to staff?

Many institutions would have difficulty answering these questions effectively unless they had a clear case where their policies had been tested. Research organisations lack comprehensive review of their policies and practices when it comes to responses to public harassment. This is clear in the uneven way in which academics are treated by their institutions, especially if they are people of colour and/or queer speaking out against issues of discrimination.

Academic freedom means that institutions must support activist academics who use their voice to promote inclusion and social progress. This means always, not just when it’s convenient. Promoting social justice should be a top priority for institutions, and everyone else who is serious about academic freedom and democracy. Dr Grey argues:

One of our first aims must be to collectively reconfigure what ‘counts’ as academic work while simultaneously challenging whether ‘counting’ is necessarily the best way to ensure the efficient use of public resources in any part of the education sector. In a funding system dominated by counting peer-reviewed publications and student completions, any public-sphere activity will continue to take a back seat to the more easily measureable outputs.

So how to best promote academic freedom whilst protecting the safety of activist academics?

Way forward

Having worked on equity and diversity policy and program development for many years, I understand keenly the sociological patterns of how institutions struggle to adequately preempt issues of public harassment of faculty and students. I have published an institutional checklist to address the gaps that I see across research organisations and the higher education sector.  This includes:

1. Measures of prevention
2. Setting and administrating policies
3. Accessible dissemination of information
4. Education of rights and responsibilities
5. Provision of support during public harassment
6. Co-designing a safety plan with the affected staff member
7. Training liaisons
8. Investigating threats
9. Putting in place additional security and resources
10. Generating an evidence-based approach
11. Reviewing the impact
12. Institutional reflection
13. Assisting decision-making.

You can see the full framework under my free resources: Sociology of Public Harassment Prevention Policies.

Beliefs: Case study of gender inequality and the environmental movement

In social science, the concept of belief describes a statement that people think is either true or false. Beliefs are deep rooted because they evolve from early socialisation. They are maintained tacitly through everyday interactions with our primary social networks like family, religious communities, and through close friendships with people from the same socio-economic backgrounds. Beliefs are hard (though not impossible) to change because there is a strong motivation to protect what we believe. Beliefs are strongly tied to personal identities, culture and lifestyle. Beliefs are harder to change in a short frame time because they’re interconnected to structures of power and inequality. Chipping away at one belief means re-evaluating all beliefs we hold about what is “true,” “natural,” and “normal.”

Beliefs are hard to justify objectively because they represent the social scaffolding of all we take for granted.

In this meaning, beliefs represent the status quo of what we’re willing to accept. If we ask people: Why do you think your belief is correct? They’ll often answer on “gut instinct” or they’ll defer to common sense. This is true because everyone knows it! For many people, belief is either an act of faith that does not need scientific proof, or otherwise, people find evidence for their beliefs everywhere they look, even though this does not include looking to empirical data. In many cases, however, people will also refer to authoritative texts to back up their beliefs, like religious teachings or news reports.

The key to understanding why beliefs are hard to shift comes down to one question: Who benefits from this belief? For example, when we ask: Are men and women fundamentally different? Someone who benefits from patriarchy and doesn’t want to lose their gender privilege will say: “Of course, men and women are different, look around you! Women act this way and they’re from Venus; men act that way and they’re from Mars.” A social scientist will bring up examples from other cultures where gender is organised differently. Still, the other person will see these examples as exceptions to their rules about gender.

Gender differences are used to justify inequality: women are more caring, so they’re better at raising babies; men are more rational, so they make better leaders. To think otherwise means restructuring our labour arrangements at home and work; it means rethinking social policy about how we remunerate jobs; it means changing the balance of power in the law, in education, in the media and so on.

When people don’t believe scientists on climate change or genetically modified (GM) foods or vaccinations, it comes down to their assessment of: What does this mean for me? What life changes are required of me? How does this scientific knowledge undermine my place in the world? In other words: how does this science support or threaten my values?

Values: Case study of the adoption and resistance of GM foods

Values are linked to one’s sense of morality. Where belief is something maintained at the individual level through agents of socialisation, values are more easily distinguished through their connection to broader social interests. Values relate to the standards of what individuals perceive to be “good” or “bad” in direct reaction to what our society deems to be “good” or “bad.” Values are shaped by cultural institutions like education and religion. Societies depend on shared values to maintain social order, which is why many societal values are often enshrined in law. Traditional societies appeal to values of authority like religion or authoritarian leadership. Christian capitalist societies appeal to values of individualism and economic rationalism. Social democratic societies are more secular and informed by humanist values. All of these underlying value systems impact on public values of science.

Still, values are contested, depending on whose social interest is being served.

Take for example GM foods. In Sweden, public consultation and scientific input is framed around best interests for public good. (Not without controversy.) Some Scandinavian laws will allow GM food to be grown in controlled areas because it benefits their national economy, but they won’t support imported GM foods. In countries like Peru, GM foods have been banned for 10 years because they mostly come from imported products. These products are deemed to be unsafe. At the same time, GM foods conflict with class struggles of the highly political Indigenous farming movement. Peru has a long history of mistreating Indigenous populations, but the national identity is firmly locked to agrarian innovation that stretches back to the Incan empire. Peru has also joined other Latin nations to wind down trade with the USA and increase trade with Asian nations. Resistance to GM foods serves a dual economic and political purpose of resisting cultural imperialism and supporting Indigenous farming movements. (Though Indigenous environmental protests are ignored in other areas, such mineral resources and specifically big oil.) The key here is the political economy of Peru (and Latin America more broadly) is informed by socialist values that resist capitalist interests. GM foods have publicly been positioned as part of this capitalist incursion.

In the USA the GMO public debate has been framed around commercial interests. This stems back to early industrial era and the plant patent act of 1930. The commercialisation of American agriculture goes back to the early 19th century, where many farming communities were self-sufficient. By the early 1920s differentiated crop varieties were already established. Trade associations arose as mass production started. With more money at stake, legislation steps in to formalise the production of seeds. Historical evidence shows that the law struggled to weigh up the commercial lobbying of large agricultural organisations (specifically the American Association of Nurserymen) versus the rights of small farmers. At this time, when economic rationalism was beginning to set precedents, commercial interests won out over collective interests. This isn’t simply a case of greed of corporations, this is about the political economy of early American society. American values were firmly tied to Protestant beliefs (sociologist Max Weber has detailed this thoroughly). In early American capitalism, it was God’s will that people should work hard and make as much money as possible, to ensure their place in heaven. The 1930 plant patent was fought heavily on moral and social grounds.

Today, these tensions around values and commercial interests often feature in GM food debates (see for example various highly emotive comments to our Science on Google+ Community). Invariably, people bring up Monsanto. I’m not a fan of Monsanto. In fact, I see them operating as a neo-colonialist corporate machine. Then again, I can accept that the practices of one entity do not nullify the potential benefits of GM foods altogether. I want to learn even more about the science and debate the findings robustly. Anti-science members of the public, however, cannot accept that scientific methodology of GM foods can be separated from commercial interests to help feed underprivileged people.

This is glaringly obvious when we have scientists discuss the not-for-profit scientific collective that have developed Golden Rice, a type of rice that is engineered to be rich in Vitamin A. In our Science community, we have people dismissing the potential benefits of Golden Rice, because they don’t believe that the science can remain commercially impartial. These people see only conspiracy and greed behind the motivations of scientists. Otherwise people argue that this technology is unsafe, though it’s been tested (though not without controversy over informed consent). People also get very angry that Golden Rice doesn’t address the social causes of poverty, such as corruption and social inequality. Golden Rice doesn’t claim to solve world poverty; it aims to address Vitamin A deficiency in developing regions.

People think that science should solve all the world’s problems, when in reality we tackle one aspect of one specific problem at a time.

Debates about GM foods are, in fact, a cultural battle over value systems. Are capitalist nations like America still deeply invested in individualistic values or can we move towards collective action? Scientists make the case that some GM food technologies represent a safe, relatively inexpensive way to address hunger. In order to accept this argument, the public needs to be able to trust that the science isn’t governed by commercial entities. How you see this depends on your values: are GM foods “good” or “bad”? A vocal section of the public is distrustful of science on GM foods. They think GM foods are bad. As I’ve shown this is both the outcome of history, culture and social changes. Different countries have different positions which influence whether people largely celebrate, decry or feel anxious about GM science.

In these cases, the science is used to draw very different conclusions. GMOs are either for or against the national interest. GMOs either support social change or they impede progress. Attitudes towards the science depends on the cultural and political interests of different social groups. What’s “good” or “bad” about GM foods depends on whose point of view best aligns with societal values.

Attitudes: Case study on perceptions of risk and trust

Attitudes are relatively stable system of ideas that allow people to evaluate our experiences. This includes objects, situations, facts, social issues and other social processes. While attitudes are relatively stable, they are more superficial than beliefs and less normative than values. Attitudes can be changed more easily than beliefs. Sometimes people will say one thing, especially if it’s socially desirable to do so, but in private they may not adhere to that attitude. Someone can say they support equality but they may not practice it at home. Often times, however, people are not always aware that their attitudes are contradictory.

In contrast to values, which are culturally defined, attitudes are interpersonal. We are constantly interpreting other people in relation to the situation we find ourselves in. Language, motives, emotions and relationships can change attitudes over time. Social context also matters: cultural beliefs and values can influence whether or not attitudes change.

Attitudes about science are shaped by many societal processes, such as education, class, ethnicity and so on. Yet the social science literature has overwhelmingly shown that attitudes towards science are connected to:

1. Whether or not people are willing to accept the risks associated with a particular scientific issue; and
2. Whether or not people trust scientists in general.

Trust is a multi-dimensional concept; that is to say, it is made up of many different characteristics and these change with respect to a given social group in a particular time and place. Psychologist Roderick Kramer provides an extensive review of the empirical research on trust (he covers studies from the 1950s to 1999). At the interpersonal level, we develop trust in another person based on a belief that they have an interest to live up to our expectations. They care about us, they need us, they have a legal or moral obligation to help us. Among individuals, trust is about behaviour and reciprocity: I’ve proven you can trust me because I have not let you down and because we both understand that our trust goes both ways.

Some individuals can be generally considered to be “high trusters” and others “low trusters,” depending on their personal biographies; their experiences with institutions of authority; and other socio-cultural factors. People who are generally predisposed to the idea of trust are more likely to be open to collective social action. The reverse is true of people with low trust.

While Kramer doesn’t make this connection, low trust and commitment to social action impact on the public’s trust in science. If I hold a strong belief about the world and science contradicts my view, I will need a high degree of trust in order to be open to the information. If I take on board this scientific view, I will be forced to act on it. This means changing the social order that benefits me currently. That’s a big investment. If I have high trust in another oppositional social institution like religion or my community leader who is supporting my current belief system, why should I trust science?

At the societal level, trust doesn’t always work in relation to direct interpersonal engagement. Kramer shows how some people in certain circumstances will trust authority figures based on their history. That is: I trust this organisation because they have a strong reputation and other big players endorse them. Others will trust due to someone’s category of authority (science, politics), their role (medical practitioner, priest), or a “system of expertise” (bureaucratic management).

People who trust an authority figure or an organisation’s motives are more likely to accept outcomes, even if they are negative. Trust will matter more when people have a lot to lose, such as when an outcome is unfavourable. For example, when science will lead to social change or some new technological impact that I don’t want because it threatens my beliefs, livelihood, culture, identity or lifestyle – this requires high trust.

Research shows that public trust in social institutions has long been in decline. In America, civic trust was high just after WWII due to the nature of the war, its impact on the economy and other social changes. Public trust declined in the late-1960s due to the Vietnam war and other conservative economic and political changes. Public trust is generally at half the rate it was in the mid-1960s for federal government, universities, medial institutions and the media. Specific incidents become exemplars for more distrust, such as political scandals. Progress in technology is also related to higher distrust. People who live in relatively affluent, technologically advanced societies are more likely to distrust science. Up until the mid-1990s, the media was people’s main information source, but it was also the most distrusted social institution. The reverse was true of scientists: university researchers were trusted as experts, but people were less likely to be listening to them because they didn’t have much exposure to scientists.

In some cases, we might think that distrust in science is about lack of knowledge. Being familiar with a person or institution can help to engender trust, but not always. Again, it comes down to beliefs, values and attitudes.

People who are highly knowledgeable on a particular area such as politics are more likely to spend a lot of time taking in and responding to world views that contradict their own. These people have an information bias that they do not readily recognise. They will see themselves as rational and impartial. They see that they are sceptics ready to weigh up evidence as it comes to hand. In fact, they spend more emotional energy arguing against conflicting information because these clash with their personal world views. They argue passionately because their attitudes align with their beliefs and attitudes.

Conversely, people who know little about a topic are more likely to accept new information to be true or unbiased, but they show a weak commitment to defending this new information. Paradoxically, if people don’t feel personally invested on a social issue, they will not act. This suggests that more information or education on a topic alone is not enough to improve how the public engages in science or democratic processes.

Bluntly put, more public discussion on science alone is unlikely to convince people to productively engage in scientific discussions.

Even amongst scientists, trust in science and risk perception is affected by sociological processes. A 1999 study of the members from the British Toxicological Society finds that women were more likely to have higher risk perceptions for various social issues in comparison to men. This ranged from smoking, to car accidents, AIDS, and climate change. Looking deeper, it was a specific sub-set of White men who were more likely to perceive a low risk for these social issues; those with postgraduate qualifications who earned more than $50K a year and who were conservative in their politics. They were more likely to believe that future generations can take care of the risks from today’s technologies; they believed government and industry can be trusted to manage technological risks; they were less likely to support gender equality; and they were less likely to believe that climate change was human-made (bearing in mind climate change science has since developed further). These men had a higher trust in authority figures and they were less likely to support equality and social change. Why? Because being in a position of relative social power, they had the most to lose from social change on environmental, gender and political issues.

So if beliefs and values are so seemingly immutable, and attitudes mask underlying motives that people are unaware about, how do we increase trust in science to improve the tangible outcomes of public outreach?

Moving Forward: A case for public science

Beliefs are tied to personal identities and social status. People defend beliefs on the grounds that what they believe is true, obvious or simply “a given fact” because they have been socialised to do so since birth. Beliefs are tied to social belonging and social benefits, so there’s a lot at stake in defending them. Beliefs about equality align with the environmentalist movement because addressing climate change requires full civic participation. The beliefs of environmentalists also overlap with feminists as both groups want to see change in the social order. Beliefs are shaped by social institutions, but they can also be restricted by material constraints.

Values are normative because they are linked to powerful social institutions. Some scientific innovations are perceived to be inherently “good” or “bad” depending on how vested social interests are understood. In some contexts, GMOs are seen as bad because people think scientists can’t be trusted to separate methods from commercial interests.

Attitudes are interpersonal. They depend upon social exchange with particular people, but attitudes also reflect hidden or contradictory ideas that people hold. Public trust in institutions has been eroded since the late 1960s in different ways in different societies. People don’t trust scientists because for much of our history, our knowledge has been kept within academia. Most of the time when science reached the public, it was been reported on by the media, which is itself a mistrusted, though widely consumed, source of information.

Changing attitudes on “hot button” scientific issues is hard because people who seek out these debates already have pre-existing beliefs. Sometimes people think they’re being sceptical of a corrupt or unjust system when they take an anti-science perspective, as with the case of GM foods.

Most people view themselves favourably when it comes to social, economic, political and scientific issues. They think they’re impartial and rational, when really they’re just defending their place in the world.

Sometimes people already have a high distrust of institutions like medicine and science because they’ve been marginalised or abused by systems of power. The history of medicine has many horror stories, especially in connection to unethical treatment of Indigenous groups, minorities, women and the mentally ill. Unfortunately, science cannot simply hatch these up to isolated incidents of yore, as these cases directly impact on present-day public mistrust of scientists.

Rather than dismissing the past, it is more useful for scientists to understand how historical and cultural relations affect how people perceive the scientific community.

Better public education on science is only part of the answer. As we see, even amongst highly educated scientists, those with greater social power will happily acquiesce to higher authority. They are willing to take more risks with science and technology, but they are less supportive of equality and progressive social change where this threatens their beliefs and social position.

Supporting the public’s reflexive critical thinking is more important than simply pumping out science information.

Reflexive critical thinking

Sociologist Ulrich Beck argues that a general state of reflexivity might be part of the reason why people are so worried about technological and social risks in ways that are not especially productive.

Reflexive critical thinking is a methodology for knowing how to question information, as well as identifying and controlling for our personal biases.

How sociology can help

As Susanne Bleiberg Seperson and others have argued, sociology has a public image problem. The public doesn’t know what we do, let alone how we do it. We write in jargon. We are seen as too theoretical and not very practical.

The social sciences are well-poised to improve the public’s trust in science because our work is focused on the influence of social institutions on behaviour. We are not above critique on these grounds. My blog has regularly shown how even as we expand social knowledge of culture and inequality, Western social sciences can misappropriate minority cultures or exclude Indigenous voices.

Many of the anti-science critics are espousing cultural arguments without knowing it. This is where public sociology can really shine, by showing how inequality, social values and power affect how people engage with science.

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