I recently went on a walk with my 3-year-old granddaughter. She stopped to bend down to inspect flowers and pebbles in the road. I began to think about who her first teachers might be and who prepares them for the classroom.
Who are these people who teach future teachers and other young people today in colleges and universities? They are instructors and professors. I was one of them before retiring after 27 years. But many professors are now considered out-of-touch elites, especially if their work deals with disadvantaged people. Many have recently had their grants cancelled by the federal government.
To some people today, we are the enemy.
If were still teaching today, would I be your enemy?
Before you decide, let me tell you a little about me.
Like my granddaughter, I enjoyed a childhood exploring the world around me. I became a Boy Scout nature merit badge instructor and held my first classes at a summer camp. A decade later, I became an instructor in Labor Education at the University of Missouri after completing a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in industrial hygiene.
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Much of my work was training trade unionists in occupational health and safety hazards in their workplaces. I was funded by a grant through the U.S. Department of Labor. After President Ronald Reagan was elected, our grant was terminated.
My wife and I moved from Columbia, Mo., to Washington, D.C. After a year in consulting, I was hired at the American Petroleum Institute. I worked there for several years and was mentored by several highly skilled scientists and policy analysts.
After leaving API, I began a PhD program in environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health. My area of research was airborne allergens, which often triggered asthma in sensitized kids. Many of these kids were living in poor urban housing; a disproportionate number were African American.
After I completed my PhD, I became an assistant professor at Saint Louis University. I obtained a federal grant to map the city of 51şÚÁĎ for lead-based paint hazards. One of our findings was that children, especially Black kids, had the highest rate of blood lead in the city.
As I moved through the ranks from assistant to full professor, I did drinking-water research in Latin America and the Caribbean. The lack of clean drinking water was especially acute if you were Haitian and living as a refugee in a sugar cane “batey” in the Dominican Republic.
Some of my best students worked for federal agencies that have since been dismantled. Some have lost their jobs. These are professionals who entered the U.S. Senate building in response to the anthrax scare in the early 2000s, contributed to the PEPFAR program for HIV in Africa, and developed programs to study the health of people who live near heavily polluted parts of the country.
In today’s political climate, my work could be derided as “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion).
I don’t think my work was that different from that of academics today, whose projects are being forced to end. If you ask most research professors what motivates their research, it is ideas and the way those ideas can be translated into helping people and our community.
Vice President JD Vance, in a speech he made to a conservative conference in 2023, ended his talk by invoking Richard Nixon: “The professors are the enemy.”
So — if I walked back into the classroom today, would I be your enemy?
