How Science Got Lost
RCP8.5 and the Politics of Plausible Catastrophe I have been thinking about the recent RCP8.5-related conversation not as a climate denial story or an argument against climate action, but as a case study in how science can sometimes get lost. Not how science got lost because scientists are corrupt. Not how science got lost because […]
University Presidents Who Are Listening
They were not the headliners. I expected the familiar: arrive, deliver remarks, affirm institutional commitments, depart. They did all the familiar, but then they stayed. Three times, in three different settings, I found university presidents not just staying but listening. Not ceremonially, but substantively. Not as figureheads, but as participants in conversations that were, at […]
The Next Frontier Is Engagement
Two and a half centuries of American history suggest that the tension between knowledge and use will never disappear. Bush won the battle. Kilgore won the war. The next settlement between science and democracy will depend on whether we can build institutions capable of navigating a world where expertise and democratic engagement evolve together.
