The Trouble With Preaching Transformation

I recently attended a conference where two conversations stood out. One was about protecting democracy. The other was about the social transformations needed to confront climate change.

They were very different discussions, but as I reflected on them, I found a common thread: What happens after we explain the problem? Crucially, what happens once we publicly state the need to take affirmative action to solve a problem?

There is no doubt that academics are very good at diagnosis. Speaking of democracy, we study democratic backsliding, institutional erosion, inequality, exclusion, and concentrations of power extensively. We rely on rigorous research; we collect original data, employ various methods and tools to corroborate our findings. We also clearly state our research limitations so we can be clear about what we can or cannot explain. In short, what we communicate is meaningful and valuable. We can explain how institutions become less democratic, why citizens lose trust in them, and what happens when participation becomes hollow. We speak, rightly, about the need to protect democracy.

But having socialized in academia for so long, I kept wondering about the…