Going Public,Gaining Credibility

Abstract

Calls for university and college professors to engage with public issues—for example, by collaborating with community organizations, participating in popular media outreach, and in other ways—are on the rise. However, engaged scholarship blurs conventional boundaries between producers of academic knowledge and the public. To what extent does participation in engaged scholarship affect professors’ credibility as sources of knowledge? We investigate this question using data from an experimental survey of university students (n = 633). We find that although engaged scholars are perceived to be more liberal, students believe they are more knowledgeable and should be more influential in public policy decisions compared with nonengaged scholars. Open-ended responses indicate that scholarly engagement with the public is seen as an indicator of faculty members’ experiential expertise and personal commitment to public issues. Consequently, scholarly engagement with social problems often strengthens professors’ credibility among students as information sources. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the engaged scholarship movement and for the sociology of knowledge.