Global science equity*

Now that the Trump government is relentlessly attacking higher education and abusing its power at the border to arbitrarily refuse entry to scholars, many academics wonder whether it’s still possible to travel to the US for conferences or other research purposes, especially if they have publicly criticized the Trump government or its allies. But where you can travel, under what conditions, for your academic work, has long been an issue for scholars who come from countries with “weak passports”: passports with which they require visas, often in long-winded, uncertain bureaucratic processes that they might not be able to finish before the conference in question has taken place, and for which they often have to pay with their private money.

As a European with a strong passport, this topic was, for a long time, a complete oversight for me. I had no idea how much hassle colleagues from countries with weaker passports had to endure when they wanted to travel internationally (see also here, for example). This is just one of the many ways in which the global scientific system is unequal. If you imagine, for a moment, a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, with the specific task of imagining that you’re a PhD student but you don’t know in which country, globally, you’ll land, you can start to visualize the huge differences.

Even though there are complexities and differences between disciplines, much of the academic landscape is organized in a center-periphery logic in which certain universities, networks, or journals dominate the discourse. Maybe this is particularly extreme in the humanities (where you then also find an interesting divide into French- and English-speaking spheres). I can’t speak for all fields, but I hear from many colleagues that they experience a similar logic: there are a few main players, e.g. research groups or even single academics, who draw a lot of attention. Even within countries, one can sometimes find such dynamics. The most visible players attract most funding, the best PhD students, and sometimes also most media attention.

Now, maybe to some extent such an attention economy is unavoidable in research. But what is not unavoidable – and smells much more like a remnant of the world’s long durée past – is that these main players are so much concentrated in countries that are former colonial powers that continue to hold strong influences over knowledge production. Or that the boards of international science organizations are so dominated by people from the US and Europe. Or that the speakers of many “international” scientific conferences, for example the World Science Forum, are so unevenly distributed across countries. Or that Nobel prizes and other international awards go so often to people from the same few countries.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with unequal resources: research funding and travel budgets vary enormously, and weak currencies can add to the problem. In many countries, a job at a university comes with such a high teaching load that research becomes a spare-time hobby. Sometimes, academic salaries are so low that people need to take on additional jobs, e.g. in consulting or administration, to make ends meet. No wonder they cannot “compete” with fully funded researchers from richer countries, at least not if one fails to take their circumstances into account.

But arguably, it is not only a matter of money, but also of ignorance and lazy thinking on the part of privileged academics. Warm words about the international nature of knowledge creation do not always translate into real attention to the unequal circumstances and the joint search for solutions that would help support those in less advantaged positions. We need to raise awareness and understand better what patterns of inclusion and exclusion, and what distribution of resources, shape the academic landscape.**

What’s to be done, then? I don’t think there can be easy solutions, but I am convinced that we can do better than we currently do. For early-career researchers, the Global Young Academy provides a fantastic platform for mutual learning and collaboration. Another promising path forward might be long-term collaborations between research groups from different countries, where researchers can learn from each other and jointly produce knowledge. And in the publication process, editors could pay more attention to submissions from scholars whose English might not be perfect, but who can bring new perspectives and voices into the discourse (here, the topic overlaps with questions of linguistic justice).

Once you’ve started thinking about this topic, it becomes hard to “unsee” how privileged the position of academics in richer countries is – at least, this was my experience. I tended to always look to those who are even more privileged: who teach at more well-known universities, have more travel money, or better research facilities (this is a tendency that already Adam Smith analyzed in human behavior: we pay attention to those we see ahead of us). I had quite a few humbling “check your own privilege” moments when I realized how hard it is to be an academic in most other countries.

Insofar as our goal truly is knowledge production, we should look much more towards those whose voices have, hitherto, been neglected because of their geographically or socio-economically disadvantaged position, as well as other lines of disadvantage. There is a lot of work to do, but there is also so much to learn!

 * This blogpost reflects many conversations I had with scholars from different countries, but in particular, in the last months, Amal Amin, Flavia Maximo, David Cheruiyot, Darlene Demandante, Shamiso Musarurwa, Sayoni Santara, Inanna Hamati-Ataya, and the participants of this workshop. Thank you for all that I could learn from you! All remaining biases, mistakes, etc. are my own.

 ** Together with a group of scholars from different countries, we have set up a survey on questions around Global Science Equity. If you’re interested and want to help us gather data, please fill it in (link) and help spread the word.