“The United States is a democracy with strong institutions.” This was one of the more hopeful refrains from a virtual advocacy event SPSSI hosted on March 14th. While research funding, DEI programs, and academic freedom may be threatened, the strength of psychology’s institutions—including courts, Congress, higher education, and professional associations—can help shield us from the worst outcomes.

Even during that March event, I privately questioned the strength of these institutions given the tools and resources many in power are willing to use in imposing their vision of the world. Now, just a few short weeks later, the ability of our institutions to control or constrain, let alone dismantle, anti-science and anti-justice forces appears even shakier.

Since that event, the federal government has terminated over $2 billion in funding from Harvard University, the President’s budget has proposed cutting National Science Foundation funding in half, and the White House issued a new executive order targeting the legal and medical school accreditation associations for maintaining DEI requirements in their accrediting criteria (notably, the APA dropped these requirements several weeks before the executive order).

At the same time, the U.S. House of Representatives is considering HR 9495, which would allow the Administration to unilaterally strip tax-exempt status from organizations that “support terrorism.” Similar language appears in new student loan forgiveness rules for employees of nonprofit organizations. As the U.S. government has designated Hamas an official terrorist organization, these policies could serve as a pretense for retaliation against nonprofits that express solidarity with Palestinians.

These threats to psychology’s institutions are real. Many organizations have opted to keep their heads down, or, at the very least, adopted a higher level of risk aversion with the hope of simply surviving the next four years. But institutional survival is not the same as institutional relevance. At the same time, it’s hard to stay relevant if you no longer exist.

How, then, should the work of social justice-oriented psychology continue in an environment of institutional inertia? Perhaps public psychology, the practice of “giving psychology away,” can offer a strategy. Public psychology is not just a mode of outreach; it’s a form of resistance, challenging the assumption that scholarship must remain neutral, apolitical, or confined to peer-reviewed journals and classrooms. It asks psychology to confront injustice directly through public education, policy advocacy, community partnerships, and the amplification of marginalized voices.

At SPSSI’s upcoming summer conference, we will grapple with what it means to do socially engaged public psychology in a moment when many of institutional homes are under threat. We’ll discuss what it looks like to act publicly and ethically when trusted frameworks are being dismantled or repurpose and how can social scientists remain relevant as both observers and participants in social change. We’re unlikely to find easy answers, but at a time of great uncertainty, even clarifying the questions is a step in the right direction.

I look forward to connecting with you all in Portland as we come together to share new research, take stock of the current moment, and chart a course for the years ahead.

back to menu