Last Update - Fri Nov 15 2024
Astana Open 2023 Round 2
OG | PM | Ryan Lafferty
83
Education
Youtube Link (timestamped) :Here
Starting in three, two, one, let's break the Ivory Tower. Three pieces of framing and setup:
Framing
What does it look like?
First, what do we support at opening government? One, we support academics engaging with social issues like historians researching great historical figures, like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with relevance to political discourse, or social scientists prioritizing research into the causes and public policy responses to present issues like homelessness or poverty, or biologists looking more time on cutting-edge research into sickle cell anemia as opposed to abstract research into the human anatomy.
Second, we support academically engaging with organizers, with people on the ground, with local communities, conducting outreach programs to determine how they can maximize their social relevance as opposed to maximizing their publication numbers in academic journals.
Why would it be done well !
Finally, we support tying academic incentives to real-world impact. For example, quantifying the metric of social impact that an author or their research has and then tethering that to promotion, to compensation, to tenure, and so forth.
What OPP’s case might be !
By contrast, opposition defends the pursuit of scholarship for scholarship's sake. In some cases, there is overlap between social relevance and academic relevance. In the large bulk of cases, it is necessary to prioritize focus on social issues to redirect the incentives of academics to ensure they actually promote real-world good.
The overlap comment attempts to preempt a possible opp argument
Leveraging A well known Symmetry
Second piece of framing: What does academia look like on either side of the house? This is often a highly insular field, whereby you need to be relatively privileged and well-connected to get a job in academia. You often have to have attended years upon years of schools. That often accompanies a huge amount of cost and a large opportunity cost, which means wealthy individuals are those most able to engage in academia. In many cases, the people who become professors or have large positions of influence, like within departments or boards or deans in university, are relatively old and often tenured.
Impact
This is important because, in order to correct for the subconscious biases of these individuals, you need active outreach incentives to work on the ground with people who look different from you to ensure that you are not simply publishing for the ivory tower's sake but engaging with real-world issues.
Ivory Tower:a state of privileged seclusion or separation from the facts and practicalities of the real world.
Injecting a Symmetry to mitigate OO’s case
Claim
Third and finally, there are strong pressures on either side of the house, irrespective of what the general focus of academia is, for scholars to pursue scholarship and to pursue the pursuit of intellectual truths.
Analysis
The reason is that academics were often trained with a strong focus on scholarship. Their years in grad school in their post-doc era often led them to care deeply about knowledge for knowledge's sake, and they care deeply about their reputation academically within academic circles. This is important because it establishes that academics on either side of the house have strong personal incentives to ensure they still pursue the pursuit of intellectual truth. On opening government, we provide a valuable counter-balancing force, which ensures that university faculty balance those academic interests against the real necessity to improve conditions on the ground.
-Academic relevant research will happen on both sides but OG exclusives provides reasons to balance out incentives
-Acts as both preemptive mitigation and identifies a biased view of the debate’s tradeoff
Three arguments then from opening government: first, on the advancement of pro-social aims; second, on why this is better for academia; and lastly, on the moral duties of the institutions.
First argument: On the advancement to pro-social aims.
Characterization
Academia is powerful because universities concentrate brilliant scholars, collective expertise, and technical facilities, which means that universities are unusually well-positioned to advance knowledge and produce meaningful implications with an ability to affect real-world change. That change is good on our side of the house in at least three ways:
Things to say to make your argument stronger
The first is that, when academics ensure their work is socially relevant, there are immediate benefits to people on the ground. When, for example, university medical institutions focus more time developing local cures for issues plaguing local communities, people on the ground immediately benefit from access to improved medical technology. When social scientists focus more of their time researching present-day issues as opposed to abstract issues, like, for example, how people lived their lives in the 17 or 1800s, there is an immediate re-affirmation of the discrimination minorities on the ground face. This is important because universities are often built in relatively insular and wealthy areas in urban mega-cities like Mumbai. It's on our side of the house that benefits accrue to a wider audience.
2nd Argument
Claim
Secondly, social movements benefit on our side of the house.
Mechanism
Why is that? When academics actively involve themselves in the movement of social activism, they provide credentialist support to these movements. When there is, for example, an academic publicly attending rallies or speaking on behalf of the movement, upper-middle-class voters who are often the crucial swing demographic needed to affect political change are more likely to view those movements as credible and having experts on their side.
Might require more content as to why more academics will now join/attend these rallies
Further Analysis
Furthermore, when academics focus more time on relevant social issues, it provides tangible policy platforms for movements to campaign on, specific ways, for example, to stop gentrification, or ways to decrease rates of homelessness in San Francisco. That means that there is tangible evidence social movements can point to in the pursuit of political change, hence increasing their ability to bargain for change and create meaningful benefits.
Research into social issues allows for movements to advocate for specific policies
Preemptive to “Why will the process itself be done terribly ?”
The potential opposition pushback is that academics have poor incentives when it comes to the sort of socially relevant work that they do. That is unlikely given the new connections formed between academics and people on the ground, that there are now social ties between university deans and local activists, local communities, and the universities they represent. That means that Yale professors now actively work with people on the ground in New Haven as opposed to primarily spending their time in academic circles at conferences, which means that we're likely to correct for those biases.
Finally, we improve public policy on our side of the house. Why is that? There is often a lack of private sector research into important public policy issues, like, for example, how you promote economic development in rural poor areas or, for example, how you can improve access to healthcare in particularly displaced regions. Importantly, that is because there is an insufficient private profit incentive in the private sector to fulfill that type of research, which means it is necessary for academics to fill the void.
Given the lack monetary incentive, private corporations have little reason to conduct research on public policy issues
Public policy research then informs government policy; it provides you with better information on how to construct redistributive tax systems, how to promote the aggregate quality of life for real people on the ground, for example, by improving welfare schemes and the distribution of aid, e.g., Bolsa Familia in Brazil being backed up by major institutions in that country. That means, on our side of the house, research does more good for real people on the ground.
Complex public policies can only be constructed adequately after academic research
Progama Bolsa Familia: Under PBF low-income families receive cash transfers on the condition that they, for example, send their children to school and ensure they are properly vaccinated. The conditionalities attached to these transfers include school attendance for teenagers, immunisation of children, prenatal monitoring for pregnant women, and remedial education for children and for those at risk of being drawn into child labour. Local governments collect the data on eligibility and compliance, but payments are made by the federal government. “Each beneficiary receives a debit card which is charged up every month, unless the recipient has not met the necessary conditions, in which case (and after a couple of warnings) the payment is suspended.
CO POI: “If society currently believes that the sun revolves around the Earth, do you think anyone on your side would try to prove that wrong?” Um, the example is really odd. I don't think that's a huge concern. But, more importantly, our claim is that you get more support for academia.
Why is that? At present, when universities focus first and foremost on academic truth, there is a lot of distrust and hence limited funding for universities because very few people care about academic ivory tower concerns. The more and more that universities focus on ivory tower academic issues, the more disengaged they become from important societal debates, for example, around systemic racism within the police force. It does on our side of the house that universities are perceived and are covered in the media as more relevant to the public's interest, and governments become more dependent on universities on our side of the house when their public policy decisions are actively being formed by university faculty as opposed to by private sector researchers who are often funded by, worst means, large corporations. That means there is increased political support for academia on our side of the house; it is more relevant. Governments grow more reliant on universities. Hence, this argument is most important because any benefit flowing from universities is contingent on political support and funding and institutional backing for these universities.
But furthermore, it's on our side of the house that we actively increase student engagement and buy-in within university programs. High rates of dropout in universities are often in part caused because students do not feel like what they are learning in the classroom is relevant or matters. It is on our side of the house that the work of universities is more aligned with state interests. That's not just a principled good given that universities receive state support, it also increases engagement in the classroom.
We propose.