Sadly, I find this degree of interaction has declined in my lifetime. My college professors advised various government agencies and corporations routinely. I can’t imagine that happening now. Academia seems far more insular than it once was, but YMMV. I havent seen college professors rotating through government positions as much as they once did or even serving on advisory councils much.
MMMV because I’m actually in the profession, and I see what academics do outside of the university. If anything, academics’ engagement with the community has expanded, not diminished. Perhaps we don’t rotate through government positions as much as people used to – that has to do with the demands of academic careers as well as changes in policy/political career paths – but engagement with the wider community has not decreased. You might just be looking in the wrong places.
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Maybe. I just expect that politics/policy professors would advise the government, and if they do so any longer, they keep it very quiet at my alma mater. It used to be a point of pride. I dont think they do much in the state or local government either, though the governor’s kid attends. Can’t say I have seen any community leadership from that venue but perhaps it is different at your school. I guess sometimes the STEM professors have some day for local students to visit the labs and such. For the most part the faculty seem socialize with each other. Not unusual for a profession, but it does lead to insularity.
On an unrelated note, delighted to see Liz Chebey accepting a position at UVA politics. Good to have a practioner teaching.
If the politicians in government are no longer interested in hearing academic viewpoints, that can be another reason why academics are advising government less. Given the common assumption among right-leaning people that academia is left-leaning, it could be that right-leaning politicians are uninterested in getting advice from academia that they assume will go against their political positions.
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Professors do all of the things you just mentioned, especially in state and local government. You just don’t see it. I do, because I see and read what my colleagues are doing. My university has multiple initiatives to promote civic engagement, create community partnerships with public and private organizations and the state and local levels, and promote public service paths for students. I bring local and state politicians and leaders in non-profit and media fields to speak in my classes. I present in public schools regularly. I could present you a long list of colleagues at my university and others who do similar kinds of things. If anything, one of the impacts of social media on academia is that academic careers are more public-facing than they have ever been – the ivory tower has crumbled.
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This sort of thing happens all the time. When prominent public figures retire from service (or are voted out), they often find homes in universities if their names are big enough. But these people are mostly teaching graduate students in small seminars in graduate and professional schools – they are not teaching undergraduate classes, for the most part, and they are not subject to the typical demands of tenured and tenure-track academic careers. There are also plenty of clinical professors in law, business, and medical schools who are active practitioners in their fields. They do teach more than the celebrity professors, but their scholarly expectations are similarly low because their expertise is mostly in applied fields.
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I regularly interact with government leaders and the borders between academia and government are pretty porous at least at a state level - I think it’s fairly common for professors to do policy work for government agencies and for government leaders (and several steps down) to end up in academia after their government stint.
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