Over the last ten
weeks, we've primarily talked about funding with regards to how the
state and the university allocate their budget – how the state
cutting the education budget affects us as students. However, we've
also touched upon funding on a more personal level: a few of the
authors in both “Auto-Ethnographies” and “From Oppression To
Grace” talked about their experiences involving funding – most
involving either discrimination against race/gender or bias against
the topic being researched. For academics, funding can be incredibly
important – it determines both the types of projects they can work
on and their prestige amongst peers. As such, as members of the
Academy it's important for us to remain aware of the questionable
ethical practices surrounding funding on both a personal and
institutional level.
The ethical issues
surrounding funding become increasingly complicated when personal
privacy comes into play. For many projects, especially those
involving human subjects, funding requires approval from an ethics
board. Their primary purpose was to ensure the safety and projection
of participants in academic studies. However, that purpose has
changed with time. In the afterword to “Auto-Ethnographies”,
Michael Lambeck describes a system which works to shift legal and
financial responsibility onto these same participants. “In the
ethics review process the university or granting agency passes on
liability to the researchers and the researchers pass it on to their
subjects. In my view, this is not merely non-ethical, but unethical.”
(233) While there have certainly been budget issues in recent years,
the Academy has a moral obligation to help the community – not
exploit it. As institutions and researchers become increasingly
focused on preserving their own legal and financial protection,
tensions between the Academy and the surrounding community will only
worsen.
Very few
institutions are funded solely from their own members. Outside
parties such as donors and other institutions often fund both
academic and community outreach projects. However, this funding can
come with strings attached – not all of them immediately apparent.
For many groups, a large portion of outside funding depends solely on
recent reported successes. In our quartet, Nesley (who works with the
Dream Project) mentioned that they have to turn in surveys reporting
success rates in order to continue to receive funding and Izumi (who
works at the Pacific Science Center) pointed out that employees and
volunteers need to write reports about current demonstrations in
order to receive funding.
While it makes sense
to both fund more successful projects and use the promise of
additional funding as a motivational tool, this process has several
problems. While thus far there have not been many serious reported
cases of this kind of fraud in academic institutions, it does not
mean this problem is insignificant. As a result of smaller operating
budgets due to decreased third-party funding, there's additional
pressure to engage in practices such as misreporting results in order
to seem more successful. These can range from institutional standards
to personal decisions, regardless of the motivation. Not only are
these behaviors unethical (and carry heavy penalties if discovered),
but they also undermine the legitimacy of other academic endeavors.
Another serious
concern comes from the *other* kind of third party which funds
academic endeavors. Corporations with overflowing coffers often have
a vested interest in funding groups within the Academy. In 2007, BP
gave UC Berkeley a $500 million grant to create an Energy Biosciences
Institute, which would primarily work on new biofuels. While
universities are certainly feeling the effects of state budget cuts,
there are immense ethical problems associated with allowing corporate
funding. There is a major conflict of interest when companies fund
studies from an academic institution where the results could impact
their business. Personally, though I don't think there's too much to
worry about when it comes to entirely fraudulent results, I am
worried about tampering with the scientific process – the same
question phrased in two different ways can produce differing results.
Increased corporate influence on the scientific process is not a good
thing, especially when corporations aren't known for putting the
public good before shareholder profits. When large sums of money are
involved, it's often difficult to discern the objectivity and of
whatever results are being reported.
Thus far I've been
talking about ethics and funding on an institutional level. However,
murky ethics come into play on a personal level as well, especially
when it comes to discrimination. Many faculty at academic
institutions derive their prestige from their publications – both
in terms of quantity produced and quality of the publishing journal.
These publications not only grant prestige to their authors, but also
to the institution which they are affiliated with. As such, academics
who publish more frequently in respected journals receive additional
money in terms of both salaries and funding. In a morally ideal
world, this would be a relatively functional meritocracy where the
most qualified researchers receive the most funding. However, as
usual, reality is far from ideal – beyond the essays we've read in
“From Oppression to Grace”, there are several studies showing
gender and race discrimination regarding both academic publications
and faculty/tenure appointments. Given how both of these are
instrumental to one's professional standing, this kind of
institutional bigotry is especially abhorrent.
In direct contrast
with the discrimination I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the
Academy is often referred to as an “Ivory Tower” due to its
collective knowledge and perceived intellectual superiority (both
internally and externally) of its constituents. It's common for an
institution with a solid external reputation to avoid discussing
matters which could potentially disrupt that reputation. The Academy
is no different. Statistically, most faculty members are white males
and the effects of this reach beyond the bigotry involved in hiring
and publishing. In both “Auto-Ethnographies” and “From
Oppression to Grace” this quarter, we've read how “controversial”
projects (ranging from studies on institutional discrimination to
critiques on clearly political biases) which place a critical lens on
the Academy often find themselves unfunded, despite academic merit.
Personally, I can understand the desire to maintain a certain
reputation and stymie internal criticism – it is often the most
damning. However, internal critique often provides a viewpoint
lacking from external analyses: organizations which seek to limit it
often suffer as a direct result.
This post has been
rather critical for that very reason – personally, after I finished
my first draft I was understandably disheartened. I remember in our
last official class together several people mentioned feeling like
they didn't have the tools to tackle the problems we've discussed
over the last ten weeks. In our first lecture, Dr. Taranath asked how
many of us had taken a class from a female professor before – I
never realized how rare it was. It was the kind of statement which
stuck with me weeks later as I was registering for classes and looked
through the list of (predominately male) professors. As I was trying
to figure out how to actually *end* a blog post it led to a sort-of
realization– though as members of the Academy we have a
responsibility to think about these sorts of problems (and as
undergraduates we often have neither the free time or political clout
to try and tackle them directly), by simply remaining aware and
sharing these thoughts with others we can do our part to improve this
community.
