Why Public Health Experts Are Not Reaching Out to Conservatives on Covid

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This is a particularly immediate problem in 2021, but it has far more profound consequences than the simple vaccination campaign. Consider a few recent anecdotal examples I have witnessed recently: A colleague praised a student for convincingly espousing a conservative outlook in a class discussion, when the student himself clearly did not have that point. view. A second colleague noted in conference, with a distinctly distanced intonation: What would you say to a conservative, who could answer.

The presumption implicit in both conversations was clear and probably correct: no one was actually present to have these conservative views or, really, to know that they were being captured with precision.

Academia as a whole has always been liberal, but even in this context the political imbalance within social work and public health is striking. In a 2018 survey of public health academics from the Society for Epidemiological Research, 72.4% said their policies were liberal / leftist. Less than 5% responded: conservative / right-handed. A 2014 analysis of a social work program found that 9.4% of students identified as Republicans; 55.9% identified as Democrats.

In many areas, not just mine, the conservative estrangement from our professional and academic communities is damaging discourse on both sides of the partisan divide. In public health, in particular, it undermines the credibility and cultural competence we need to do our work in large parts of America. In our political conversation, this compounds the moral and intellectual decline of American conservatism itself, a palpable decline exemplified and exacerbated by the Trump presidency.

The gap between supporters and supporters provides plenty to make jokes on social media. The gap is real, however, and it’s no fun. And that hurts both Conservative and Liberal priorities.

In early 2017, I attended a health policy dinner with members of the Democratic and Republican House of Representatives. In casual conversation, it was evident that Democrats were linked to a group of professionals in health policy. Republicans were not. Shortly after, House Republicans passed an obviously shoddy bill to repeal and replace the Obamacarea bill that was supposed to be Congress’ first priority under a Republican president. The bill had so many fundamental flaws, including a proposed increase of nearly $ 13,000 in annual health insurance premiums for low-income 64-year-olds, that it politically self-immolated once it was subject to scrutiny.

This same estrangement allows for palpable absolutism and lazy group thinking among progressives. Many of our students may never have had the experience of being openly challenged by conservative peers in our classrooms.

I fear many will find it difficult to distinguish the truly outrageous arguments presented by some conservatives, the climate change prevarications or the rejection of the Republican Party’s long history of voter suppression and calls for white racism from the more worthy arguments and seriousness presented by conservatives that everyone should learn and discuss. .

For decades, for example, conservatives and libertarians have argued that civil servants’ unions exert undue influence over state and local governments. It wouldn’t have taken front-page police misconduct, union opposition to evidence-based vaccine mandates, or my own states having seriously unfunded pension liabilities, for progressives to see the merit of these views.

I do not write these words like a conservative attacking the so-called evils of the cancellation culture. I don’t write like a curator at all. I am an emphatic Liberal Democrat. Over the course of my career, I have witnessed much damage inflicted by Conservative opposition to needle exchanges and other essential public health efforts, most certainly including our current public health crisis. Angered by such memories, settled within a community of like-minded scholars, I might forget that liberal / left-wing communities are collections of flawed humans like others with our own blind spots and prejudices resulting from group compliance. Progressive academia often lacks sufficient voices in the room to call us on our mistakes. John Stuart Mill reminds us: those who know only their own version of the argument know little.

The Conservatives’ fears about discrimination in employment also seem understandable to me. Imagine two candidates, Martin and Michael. Martin finds that cultural norms among recent immigrants favor upward mobility, and that the role of structural barriers in blocking this mobility is overestimated, challenging the consensus in his field. Michael performs an equally high quality analysis, but finds the opposite result. Or imagine Lynne and Laurie. They perform a substantially identical statistical analysis of mandatory minimum sentences for illegal possession of firearms in 43 jurisdictions. Laurie finds that mandatory minimum sentences have no impact on gun crime and that such policies illustrate mass incarceration as a futile strategy that does not address the structural causes of crime.

I suspect that Michael and Laurie would have an easier discussion about work in many schools, as they bring nicer conclusions to the liberal professors in the room. Martin and Lynne might have narrower margins for methodological judgment calls or presentation stumbles. They would face the added burden of facing the (potentially very real) danger of their findings being used by politicians who do not wish minority communities good. If the issue was really sensitive, for example the effectiveness of affirmative action, the comparative successes of charter schools for minority and low-income students, or the unintended consequences of Ban the Box policies prohibiting employers from inquiring about criminal convictions, I would be even more worried if someone faced a competitive disadvantage because of their opinions or substantive conclusions.

We need to be open and intentional in responding to these concerns and guarding against our own group thinking and prejudices.

What can universities and other institutions do? Targeted outreach of students would certainly be wise, especially towards conservative rural communities where students might be very socially engaged, but might not consider graduate studies or research at the doctoral level. As with other forms of outreach, this requires thoughtful and culturally competent engagement on the part of universities hoping to expand their student numbers.

I have also come to support a radical policy with obvious ironies: we should practice affirmative action for religious, social and economic conservatives in areas of academia where those with these views are rare. If someone applies to our school who was (say) president of the University of Texas Students for Life, I want her in my class. I want progressive students to present, defend, refine, and improve their arguments knowing that a peer who disagrees with them is there, ready to engage. Of course, I want conservative students to have the same experience, learning from their peers, ready to defend, refine, and improve their own points of view.

Targeted outreach to conservative groups, communities and campuses where conservative views are prevalent, would be useful tools in meeting this challenge. The same would apply to admission preferences to promote diversity of viewpoints. Yes, there are a lot of awkward ironies here across the usual political lines. And for a million reasons, conservatives can still be rarer in public health and social work than in the corporate sector. Yet we can do better. Countless American conservatives honor, through their lives and service, the values ​​of compassion, selflessness and inclusion dear to Liberals; they are concerned with exactly the same issues that attract people to the public health and social service professions.

George W. Bush saved millions of lives around the world thanks to the President’s Emergency AIDS Program (PEPFAR), a program we could well emulate by vaccinating the world against Covid; liberal students would be well served by appreciating the impact of Christian conservatives who helped lead the effort. And a conservative student of our programs would meet countless Chicagos South Side residents who identify with the political left and who, through their own lives and service, honor the values ​​of entrepreneurship, faith-based service and personal responsibility dear to curators.

We can learn from each other, honor and challenge each other, across partisan and ideological divisions. To do this, we need both sides consistently present in our faculties and in our classrooms. This is not the reality at the moment. We need to correct this.

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