Perspectives on Politics

Table of Contents - June 2012 - Volume 10, Issue 02  

Reflections

Too Much Information? Political Science, the University, and the Public Sphere

Lisa Andersona1

a1 American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. E-mail: landerson@aucegypt.edu

Abstract

This article argues that the technological structure of the modern world has reshaped drastically the role of political scientists as purveyors of information. Only a few decades ago, scholars were still central to the development, collection and dissemination of knowledge. But the transformation in the availability of data due to the proliferation of social media and research engines creates a new environment in which scholars can no longer claim to be the erudite carriers of hard-to-get facts. In order to play a constructive role in this quickly changing setting, political scientists need to invent a new identity for themselves as active practitioners engaged in a dynamic dialogue with students and policymakers.

Lisa Anderson is the President of the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt (landerson@aucegypt.edu). Among other books, she has published Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century (Columbia University Press, 2003) and The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830–1980 (Princeton University Press, 1986).

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