The social responsibility of research to the community was the focus of this year’s Homer G. Phillips Lecture on Friday, October 21 at the Eric P. Newman Center at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL).
“If we want our research to have lasting impact on improving society, we need to think critically about the questions we ask – and the questions we do not ask – and what influences that distinction,” said Carol Camp Yeakey, an endowed professor of arts and sciences and founding director of the Center for Urban Research and Public Policy at WUSTL.
“We need to find better ways of collectively identifying hard and important questions, areas of under-interrogated issues and knowledge that the public needs to enrich their daily lives.
Yeakey said students are calling on academics to become more relevant, to get real and to face up to their biases. She said social scientists need to ask themselves what they have done to lose the public’s faith in their pursuit of “knowledge for the sake of knowledge.”
“In a society with marked inequality and growing downward mobility, every system of power is being questioned; it’s coming under attack,” Yeakey said.
“While student activism has taken many forms, the central issue is to confront inequality and injustice between the ‘haves and the have nots’ and all of its manifestations. If we want social science to matter, we need to be much more thoughtful about not only the questions we ask, but the infrastructures we have built and the reward and incentive structures that we accept and promote.”
She said recurrent questions posed in the media include whether university research is missing what matters, if university researchers are making a difference, and if so, for whom and at what social cost.
“Researchers have shown that we are good at turning research into marketable products, into startup companies and into profitable commodities,” Yeakey said. “But are researchers and funding agencies making the same efforts to translate work for the greatest social benefit to broader swaths of society?”
Chris Krehmeyer and the agency he directs, Beyond Housing, were honored at the Homer G. lecture for their ongoing work to bring social change in their 24:1 initiative that works with the communities that comprise the Normandy Schools Collaborative.
Dr. Will Ross, associate dean for diversity at Washington University School of Medicine, commended Krehmeyer’s vision.
“Beyond Housing is a model for the entire country,” Ross said. “Its vision is to make entire communities better places to live. Beyond Housing focuses on all of the areas that make up a thriving community: housing, education, health, jobs and economic development.”
Within its footprint, Beyond Housing brought in a full-service bank, a grocery store, movie theatre and $60 million in housing investment in the last seven years. It leads collective impact work with area partners to increase kindergarten readiness, improve wellness of children and families and addressing basic needs of students and families in Normandy Collaborative schools.
Krehmeyer said the organization has evolved over the past several years, believing that “home matters.”
“Home is the life in and around where you live, and it fuels and draws the best out of people that live there,” Krehmeyer said. “We think if we are going to make a place better, you have to focus on all of the things that make up the fabric of any thriving, successful place.”
