Task Force Report Available as Online Issue

Let’s Be Heard! How to Better Communicate Political Science’s Public Value PS_Special_Issue_Coveris now available as a special issue of PS: Political Science and Politics.

Political science is at a crossroads. The knowledge that it produces is more diverse and valuable than ever before—yet many audiences do not understand why or how political science is beneficial. Moreover, the rise of the internet has changed the kinds of information that people seek. For many scholars, the question has become “How do we make our knowledge accessible and relevant to others while still retaining our high standards of scholarship and teaching?”

With this question in mind, the American Political Science Association commissioned a Task Force on Public Engagement. Its leaders John H. Aldrich and Arthur Lupia solicited constructive ideas from a diverse group of 21 experienced and knowledgeable academics and public figures. Let’s Be Heard! makes these ideas available to everyone. Because of the topic’s timeliness, the American Political Science Association and Cambridge University Press have agreed to make the special issue available for free at Cambridge Journals Online.

Let’s Be Heard! is organized into three sections: Section I includes in-depth interviews with publicly engaged political scientists and practitioners; Section II examines how to change the profession’s incentives for serving others; and Section III considers new ideas, approaches, and avenues toward broadcasting the value of political science. The contributors contend that political science can offer immense, life changing value to society, but its ability to have this impact depends on its ability to communicate its knowledge effectively. Let’s be heard!

Click here for free online access and…join the conversation on Twitter with #PSletsbeheard!

Also, click here for a magazine flip version.

1 Comment

  1. This looks like a supplement to the current Perspectives on Politics topic.
    I criticize the APSA Task Force for missing the point in my essay,
    The Clarke and Primo Liberating Conception of Good Work in Political Science, at
    https://independent.academia.edu/WilliamJKelleherPhD

    They want to give political science a better name in the public’s mind by making research seem more “relevant” to public concerns, but they don’t want to challenge the dominant theory of “science” in the profession. Sorry, as John Gunnell argues in the current POP, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.

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