By: Shamira Gelbman, PhD, Professor of Political Science, Wabash College; and Katherine M. Robiadek, PhD, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Core Faculty for the Honors Program in Philosophy, Politics & the Public, Xavier University
With the support of $500 grants from MPSA, we attended the Consortium of Social Science Association’s (COSSA) Advocacy Day on March 23-24. COSSA coordinates advocacy for federal policy to support social science by those represented through its member organizations (including MPSA). Each year it convenes a two-day program in Washington, D.C., for social scientists from around the U.S. to learn about the status of federal funding for science research and advocate for its prioritization on Capitol Hill. Hailing from Indiana’s 4th and Ohio’s 1st congressional districts, we were among 87 individuals from 24 different states who participated this year.
While neither of us is currently a direct recipient of federal research grant funding, we nevertheless saw value in the opportunity to advocate for congressional support of the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Census Bureau, and other science and statistical agencies. For Shamira, who works at a small BA-granting college, this was a chance to advocate to fund agencies that support summer research experiences for undergraduates, which benefit her students across social and natural science majors. She was also motivated by an interest in advocating for statistical agencies, as the currency and integrity of the data they produce is essential to her work with students on civic literacy. Katie was motivated to participate because she had received federally-funded fellowships for area studies during her doctoral program; therefore, she knows the difference such support makes for the quality of graduate research training. Moreover, her teaching has benefitted from evidence-based pedagogical training as a graduate student through the NSF-funded Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has since applied for NSF funding with colleagues in psychology and economics, using the federal grant process as a vehicle for planning a collaborative social science research project that might not otherwise be incentivized. Though her immediate motivation to participate in this advocacy experience was to ensure continued federal funding for collaborative social science research projects and graduate research training, she also wanted to help convey the public importance of the questions social scientists study to lawmakers and be part of keeping these questions on their agendas.
Overall, we enjoyed connecting with colleagues from a variety of states and disciplines, hearing about the work COSSA and its partner organizations do to promote social science in the halls of government, and trying our hand at explaining the benefits of our work to policy staff in our own senators and representatives’ offices. We learned that some offices that we didn’t expect to be very receptive were in fact eager for information about the local impacts of social science funding, ways in which social science research can support their other policy priorities, and opportunities to help release grant funds as a matter of constituency service. This confirms how important it really is for social science researchers to have effective relationships with political office holders in order to serve as resources for them on pertinent public questions.
Shortly after our Advocacy Day experience, the Trump administration revealed its FY 2027 budget request, which, among other cuts to education and science research, calls for defunding the NSF’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate. Furthermore, there have been strong indications that NSF leadership is taking steps to dismantle the SBE Directorate this year. These are alarming developments – both for research funding prospects in our discipline and for what they signal about the state of checks and balances as a guardrail against executive overreach.
In light of these developments, we encourage everyone to contact their senators and representatives as soon as possible and urge them to push back on the SBE Directorate’s elimination. It is important to help elected officials understand how their states, districts, and constituents are affected. For more information and guidance in this effort, see COSSA’s Save SBE Toolkit: https://cossa.org/action-center/save-sbe/.
Finally, we strongly encourage our colleagues—especially those who benefit more directly than we do from NSF and other research funding agencies—to consider participating in next year’s COSSA Advocacy Day. The stakes are higher than ever for the future of federally-funded social science, so do keep an eye out for messages from COSSA, MPSA, and other organizations about timing, registration processes, and travel grant opportunities so that you can be part of these urgent advocacy efforts next time around.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the MPSA (Midwest Political Science Association). Any content provided is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as official statements or endorsements by MPSA.