Nathan Phillips, who just ended a 14-day hunger strike, said he was compelled to action by dissatisfaction with academia’s passivity and the fervor of his students.

Phil McKenna reports for Inside Climate News

BOSTON—A broken solar panel that once hung in the window of Nathan Phillips’ Boston University office now serves as a message board, propped against the wall next to the professor’s desk. Taped to the panel are faded yellow pages from The Daily Free Press, the university’s student newspaper—articles from the spring of 1986, when BU student Yosef Abramowitz staged a 14-day hunger strike demanding that the university divest from companies operating under South African apartheid. 

Phillips, an environmental scientist, thinks about Abramowitz a lot these days, ever since he began his own hunger strike two weeks ago, to protest what he says are public health and safety violations related to the construction of a large natural gas compressor station on top of a toxic landfill in Weymouth, outside Boston. 

“He showed me that you can force issues into the spotlight, that hunger strikes can do that,” Phillips said of Abramowitz. “He lost the battle, but they won the war.”

The hunger strike—which he ended at about 3 p.m. Wednesday afternoon—carried physical risks. Lanky to begin with, the 53-year-old Korean American professor has lost 22 pounds since he stopped eating on Jan. 29, and has been subsisting on unsweetened tea, sea salt and vitamin supplements. 

The protest also carried professional risks. He has been challenged by colleagues and his increasing activism—Phillips has been arrested for non-violent protests against fossil fuel projects three times since October—may lead other scientists, including some potential research collaborators, to question his methods and objectivity.  

Phillips says they are risks he has to take.

“There’s really no other recourse that me or others fighting this battle have because the state and federal regulatory and executive agencies have failed the community,” he said. “They have washed their hands of this.”

An Increasing Sense of Obligation

Over the last decade, Phillips has undergone a radical shift from a scientist careful to maintain an apolitical stance to a researcher who disrupts pipeline construction projects, places his body in front of moving coal trains and occupies the offices of state regulators. It’s a change that began gradually, he said, fueled in part by growing disillusionment with aspects of academia, and propelled forward by the students he teaches. 

Like other scientists around the country, he’s endured the seeming disdain for science shown by the Trump administration, in particular for climate science, something the president has repeatedly called a “hoax.” 

Phillips is not the only scientist to respond by moving toward advocacy, as researchers with a front-row seat to the extent and impact of climate change feel an increasing obligation to take on a more active role.

Thousands of scientists now participate in the March for Science, an annual demonstration that began soon after Trump’s inauguration in 2017.  More than 1,500 scientists recently signed a petition in support of Extinction Rebellion, an environmental organization that leads non-violent protests over climate change. And last fall, 11,000 scientists warned of a looming climate emergency in the journal BioScience. 

The increasing activism by academics is not without precedent. During the Vietnam War social scientists played an active role in the anti-war movement, leading teach-ins and participating in hunger strikes, marches and the occupation of military buildings. 

But for scientists, activism comes with a cost. In the academy, there is an understanding, nearly as old as the scientific method itself, that there is a clear divide between what can be proved scientifically and moral judgment. When scientists engage in advocacy, at some point they cross a line that calls into question their ability to conduct objective research.  Where exactly that line falls—signing a petition, taking part in a march, refusing to eat—is debatable. But the potential impacts, including the denial of tenure, ostracism from peers, or being overlooked for grants or awards, can destroy a career. 

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