The biggest social impact of professors occurs in the class room and in one's (more extended) role(s) as intellectual mentor to students, day in day out.* This simple but important truth is ignored by national (and most private) grant agencies. That they so forget it is, while deplorable, not so surprising because their metrics are aimed at various research activities (unless the grant, usually smaller and less prestigious is devoted to ‘innovation in teaching.’) In practice, research grants are conceived as wholly opposed to teaching: they buy out teaching and reduce the time of professors inside the class-room. In some academic environments, this approach has encouraged considerable division of labor between researchers and teachers. Undoubtedly, some of this division can be traced back to differences in aptitude and interest in teaching (and research); and undoubtedly the (potential) fruits of some advanced research are very far removed from what can be conveyed in any (future) class-room or be sold in various marketplaces. But nearly all that is taught is the product of earlier research and in some disciplines the class-room is itself a site of (collaborative) research.
Remarkably enough, the mind-set that impact has to be conceived in terms of activities outside the class-room has been taken over by professors, too. So, for example, in a recent discussion "philosophy's impact" is (correctly) opposed to intra-professional discussion within specialist journals; but it is mistakenly conceived as "societal relevance," that is, we are urged to influence "stakeholders in particular policy processes, how to effectively interject insights into conversations." (LSE 's Impact blog; HT Dailynous).
Don't mistake me: it is probably good for all academics to have regular time away from the class room and do specialist research. Undoubtedly, there can be trade-offs (in time, attention, skills, etc.) between teaching and research. But -- speaking as a philosopher of science -- all research, with the exception of some of the arts, should aim at leading to something (knowledge, skill, methods, technologies, etc.) that is, to use an insight I first learned from Catarina Dutilh Novaes, transferable. And when one focuses on impact as transferability the importance of the class-room ought not be overlooked. Undoubtedly quite a bit of research finds its ways to the public in practices, knowledge, lobbying, and (embedded) technologies (etc.) away from the (on-line or physical) class-room, but that's not the only impact we professors have.
To be clear: I am not rejecting social activism or the influencing of stakeholders. For example, I sometimes write editorials in Dutch newspapers (for example, this post expands on a point I made here) and have lectured to non-academic audiences. Moreover, qua philosopher of economics, I try to engage with economists and some policy-makers. But it is a mistake to conceive of (social) impact in ways exclusively removed from teaching in the class-room (or text-book).
To say this is not to reduce all teaching to impact. I can be fond of a romantic conception of teaching as life-changing, experiments in living. It's hard to find such experiments in living in many large lecture courses that teach to the exam or by the text-book. But it is undeniable that such courses are the not inconsiderable impact of prior research. By neglecting this pedestrian truth in policy design and public discussion, we contribute to a kind of practical madness in which research is conceived as something wholly opposed to teaching and in which 'training the next generation' is treated as an afterthought.
*Marlies Glasius reminded me of this recently.
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