On Earning Trust:
The Case for the Social Sciences

Our first CUF panel “Earning Trust in Higher Education” explored how universities can regain public confidence through transparency, inclusion, and accountability. Panelists discussed public perceptions including beliefs that college is too expensive, that the system is unfair to those who don’t attend college, and that higher education encourages political indoctrination. Many people see universities as engines of stratification—vehicles for maintaining class hierarchy rather than promoting mobility.

To combat this perception, panelists stressed that universities need to focus on demonstrating their community impact, particularly through research that addresses local challenges (one example: NYU’s behavioral economics work helping the NYC Administration for Children’s Services improve their caseworker training). In the video at right, participant Aaron Thompson encourages universities and instructors to be explicit about the employability competencies that humanities and social science students develop through their learning.

In this fireside chat, Brad DeLong and William Janeway discussed whether economic history has lessons relevant to today’s crisis of trust. Brad DeLong noted that current levels of institutional distrust are historically anomalous but not unprecedented—and trust can be rebuilt, though it requires sustained effort. He emphasized that economic anxieties, particularly around wage stagnation and wealth inequality since the 1970s, have contributed significantly to institutional distrust, as well as the fracturing of shared information environments.

Bill Janeway emphasized that rebuilding trust will require universities to find ways to communicate the value of scholarly skepticism and intellectual humility without undermining their authority.

Our second panel, “Earning Trust in Societal Institutions,” analyzed the conditions under which major social institutions gain or lose legitimacy—and how trust can be rebuilt across sectors. Panelists discussed the history of anti-intellectualism and perceived elitism in universities, as well as the importance of participatory processes in research in rebuilding trust, including deeper connections to local communities that go beyond discussion into co-creation of research.

In the video at left, Margaret O'Mara provides a historical perspective on how the erosion of trust in universities was co-terminous with the destruction of trust in political institutions, describing how modern day Silicon Valley emerged from the eras of the Vietnam War and Watergate as an attempt to empower individuals rather than cede information and media control to institutions.

Our final panel, “Funder Perspectives on Earning Trust,” examined how funders assess leadership and credibility, as well as how university researchers can help funding organizations meet their goals as philanthropy addresses increasingly urgent challenges. Our panelists discussed the importance of humility and reliability in interacting with grantees and communities as funders and as representatives of social science.

In the videos below, Sam Gill discusses the importance of recognition in combating nihilism, and Caroline Montojo cites an example of community-driven neuroscience research on low-flying helicopter noise—leading to changed policy outcomes—in south central Los Angeles.