The Chastened Dream: Knowledge, Action and Professional Education (former titled: What are We All Doing Here, Anyway?

1. The Chastened Dream: Knowledge, Action and Professional Education (former titled: What are We All Doing Here, Anyway? Professional Education, Social Science and the Question of Values) Jal Mehta CMEI Colloquium April 21, 2009

2. Overview: The Enlightenment Dream The Dream: Science/reason + public policy = liberal progress

3. Overview: The Chastened Dream The dream The chastened dream Limits of the dream • Values • Politics • Knowledge • Policy

4. Overview: The Chastened Dream The dream Early public policy schools Public policy schools today

5. Overview: The Chastened Dream The dream The chastened dream Limits of the dream Mismatch Early public policy schools Public policy schools today Little change

6. Plan for the Talk 1. History and strengths of the dream 2. Four Limits of the Dream 3. Mismatch: Policy Schools struggle to respond 4. Recasting the Dream, Recasting Professional Education

7. 1. The Dream

8. Science, Rationality and Progress:A Thumbnail History • The dream: scientific knowledge + policy = progress • Emergence of social sciences as disciplines • Progressive Era & scientific management • Creation of early schools of public administration

9. Science, Rationality and Progress:A Thumbnail History • Reached zenith in mid 1960s • Newly awakened to huge social problems • “End of Ideology” & “best and brightest” • State action informed by professional expertise • Creation of public policy schools (including JFK school)

10. Do you believe in the dream?* *More precisely: Do you believe that public policy, guided by scientific knowledge and reason, is our best hope of achieving progress?

11. What Are the Virtues of the Dream? Collected thoughts of the audience • Progress is based on information, drawing on the scientific process • Public policy is a necessary tool for creating social change – we can’t sustain social change w/o public policy • Scientific knowledge brings objectivity to the process • We have achieved progress in raising people’s standard of living through these methods • What would an alternative sound like? The policies have to happen, and the theories have to be good theories • Science in the strict sense vs. scholarship

12. Strengths of the Dream: Hallmark Virtues of the Enlightenment • Truth: Science/data preferable to supposition, ideology • Reason: Science preferable to naked power/politics • “Republican War on Science” (Mooney) • Obama: “science-based administration” • Progress: Public policy leverages “what we know” for improvement at scale • We are living the dream! • KSG – My doctoral program: “Sociology & social policy” • GSE – “Nexus of research, policy and practice.”

13. 2. Limits of the Dream

14. What Are Some Limits of the Dream? Collected thoughts of the audience Public policy isn’t created in an apolitical vacuum • People justify the policy by justifying what they want to do anyway • People who experience public policy have little opportunity to shape it. • Disconnect between what policy intends nad implementation • Once in place, difficult to change as circumstances change • No moral underpinnings

15. Four Limits of the Dream 1. Values 2. Politics & claims of expertise 3. Knowledge 4. Policy & implementation

16. Limit #1: Values

17. Limit #1: Values(People disagree with the dream…)

18. Limit #1: Values(People disagree with the dream…) • Science cannot settle questions of value • “Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to the only question important for us: ‘What shall we do and how shall we live?"‘ -- Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” quoting Leo Tolstoy • Collapse of the “fact-value” dichotomy (Putnam) • “End of ideology” gives way to massive cultural and social conflict • Busing, abortion, crime, welfare – not by data alone

19. Limit #1: Values(People disagree with the dream…) • Science cannot settle questions of value • “Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to the only question important for us: ‘What shall we do and how shall we live?"‘ -- Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” quoting Leo Tolstoy • Collapse of the “fact-value” dichotomy (Putnam) • “End of ideology” gives way to massive cultural and social conflict • Busing, abortion, crime, welfare – not by data alone

20. Limit #1: Values • Attacks from the right because “liberal progress” narrative undermines: • Individualism: • Government is the problem (Reagan) • Gov’t support dependency (Murray) • Community: • Policy vs. civil society (Glazer) • The people: • Elitist and anti-democratic (Kristol) • Markets: • State planning vs. markets (Hayek, Friedman) Example: Welfare/AFDC

21. Limit #1: Values • Attacks from the left, which sees it as “technocratic” change which ignores: • Bottom up change • Conflict, power, class • Race, gender, and identity • Speaking truth to power – should not just be instruments of the man • Social movements and organizing Example: World Bank/IMF Loans

22. Limit #2: Politics

23. Limit #2: Politics(And not only do people disagree, they have the right to have their voice heard)

24. Limit #2: Politics(And not only do people disagree, they have the right to have their voice heard) • Dream “depoliticizes” politics* • Expertise vs. democracy • Weiss: Limited use of research in policy • Public policy schools lack “jurisdictional claim” of other professions * Objection applies to the “strong form,” less to the “weak form.”

25. Limit #3: Epistemology/Knowledge

26. Limit #3: Epistemology/Knowledge(Even if people would listen to us, what we could tell them is limited and often fallible)

27. Limit #3: Epistemology/Knowledge(Even if people would listen to us, what we could tell them is limited and often fallible) • Limits of predictive social scientific knowledge • Social science vs. natural science • R2 often less than 10 percent • Limits of moving from (often weak) causal knowledge to practical action (Mark Moore) • Jump from A causes B to “we should do X” • Jumps from general to particular • Limits in how we “see” created by measurement • Commensuration and the problems of “legibility” (Scott) • Discretion a necessary part of any bureaucracy

28. The Problem of Legibility:The Forest and the Trees From James Scott, Seeing Like a State, New Haven: Yale, 1998

29. Limit #4: Limits of Policy

30. Limit #4: Limits of Policy(Even if policymakers did what we wanted, top-down policy can be a weak tool for changing human behavior)

31. Limit #4: Limits of Top-Down Policy • Changing people (hard) vs. moving money (easy) • Difficulty of changing behavior of agents of the state • Discretion & street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky) • Practice as well as policy • Backwards mapping (Elmore), policy as hypothesis (Tyack and Cuban), distributed leadership (Spillane and Diamond), • Networks, incentives, legitimacy, constructivism, etc. • Difficulty of changing client/citizen behavior • Society & culture • “Nudge” and behavioral economics

32. 3. Mismatch: Professional Schools and the Chastened Dream

33. Professional Education isat the Nexus of the Dream Knowledge Knowledge + Action Action Arts and Sciences Prof. Schools Policy & Practice

34. Public policy schools bear the organizational imprint of the original dream (1965) Political Factors New Policy Schools JFK/LBJ era optimism about dream Gov’t need for policy analysts Curriculum Quantitative policy anal. Statistics Operations research Creation of public policy schools Faculty Mostly econ & poli sci Quantitative emphasis Policy “relevant” Academic Factors Reacting against public administration schools Seeking academic legitimacy from disciplinary scholars Less emphasized Practitioners CHILE (culture, history, institutions, law, ethics)

35. Have public policy schools adapted to the limits of the dream? Macro: Forces sustaining the original dream • Status and academic legitimacy • Academic over practical • Quantitative modeling over institutional analysis • Disciplinary mix largely unchanged • Practitioners increasingly present, but lesser role in governance

36. Have public policy schools adapted to the limits of the dream? Meso: Forces sustaining the original dream • Academic cache • Cultural milieu Meso: Forces for a revised dream • Loose coupling and fragmentation • Mansbridge, Moore, Ganz, etc. • Business school example (practical + high status)

37. Have public policy schools adapted to the limits of the dream? Micro: Pragmatism a force for a revised dream • Teaching masters students & executive education • Value add question • More case studies • Result: More courses in things relevant for public action, but no overall rethinking of core purpose or mission. • Much is not social science at all (accounting, etc.)

38. The Ed School: A Brief Look Trends favoring the original dream: • Legitimacy rooted in social scientific knowledge • Don’t confront questions of values (even less than K sch) • Don’t confront whether expertise should translate to power • Don’t confront limits of knowledge • Don’t emphasize limits of policy • Feminized profession = greater imperative for status • Imprinting: Research by researchers, teaching by teachers

39. The Ed School: A Brief Look Trends supporting a revision of the Dream: • Wider mix of disciplines • No legacy policy analysis; more institutional analysis • Practice as well as policy • Leadership degree • Capstone project as opposed to dissertation • Beginning to think out of the other end of the telescope

40. 4. Recasting the Dream, Recasting Professional Education

41. Towards the Future The dream The chastened dream Limits of the dream Match Early public policy schools Public policy schools tomorrow Recasting

42. There is still a case for science (albeit a humbler science) • Science can’t tell you how to act, but it can help you with (among other things): • Evaluating interventions • Identifying problems • Creating ways of seeing • Unpacking reasons for gap between policy and practice • Understanding alternatives to usual policy mechanisms (horizontal networks, etc.) • Creates broad grained picture, even if can’t help make more specific decisions

43. But, still, traditional model limited in ways discussed • Doesn’t speak to questions of values • Doesn’t deal with questions of role of expertise in democracy • Doesn’t directly respond to limits of own knowledge • Still largely assumes policy only and best vehicle for change

44. Recasting: What Would You Need to Know to Act Effectively in the Public Sphere? (A sacrificial proposal) Values Wisdom, judgment, practical reason Science (and its limits) Practical knowledge Politics Policy (and its limits)

45. Questions to Ponder in any Recasting • What are the critical elements needed for public action? • Is our role to serve power or critique it? • How can we teach people how to act when knowledge is limited and fallible? • Will we be replaced if we don’t get this right?

46. Q & A: Questions from the Audience • Is there urgency to responding to this now? • If we’re not doing it right, then maybe we should be replaced • What do we mean by values? • Practically – how deal with contested values? • Also issues of religion • Isn’t it taking a positivist stance to see values as disentangled from questions of knowledge • Example: Religion excluded from secular questions • Haven’t I constructed science in a value free way (science has values: skepticism, humility, and so forth) • Underlying metaphor of science/engineering process • Craft like knowledge is important in science • Maybe we should think about architecture as a metaphor • Public policy schools undefined in the roles they are training people for: policymakers, administrators, organizers, people who whisper in the ear of policymakers • Are ed schools (at least this one) undefined in what we are trying to achieve • We suffer for all of the confusions we are implicating • Students come with a dream, it gets chastened – if all you have is the chastened dream, why would people come? • Passion and inspiration – Roosevelt, kennedy, Reagan, Obama? • --- People who brought passion to the subject area important • Question: Why would we expect schools to take on five tasks rather than one or two • What would ground the norms or questions? • How would we talk to each other? • Response (Meira): Pentagon is reframing of what it would mean to be a knowledgeable actor – everyone would have these same capacities? • What are the implications for disciplines that aren’t trying to being professional schools?