Thousands at March for Science, Hundreds from BU
Crowd voices support for science, anxiety over Trump administration
About 120 Medical Campus representatives met at the Boston Public Library to join Saturday’s March for Science on the Boston Common. Photo by Derek Palmer.
On Saturday about 70,000 people gathered on the Boston Common for the March for Science, one of more than 600 held across the United States and around the world. Despite overcast and sometimes rainy skies and stubbornly chilly temperatures hovering in the mid-40s, scientists, engineers, and their allies filled the Common to protest proposed federal funding cuts, push for evidence-based policy, and advocate for diversity in science and engineering. Some came costumed as research subjects: bees or giraffes or wind turbines. One man dressed as the mishap-prone Muppet named Beaker. Many carried signs extolling the products of science—from antibiotics to cancer treatment to beer—and to a lesser extent, criticizing the Trump administration.
David Carballo, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of archaeology, attended the march with his wife, Jenny, also an archaeologist, and their two young sons. He split the difference between proscience and anti-Trump with a sign reading, “Be blinded by science, not by politics,” with images of English musician Thomas Dolby, known for the hit single “She Blinded Me with Science.” His eight-year-old son, Tony, held a sign that said, “Science is my future.” Carballo came to the march to show support for science and out of concern for his children’s future. “Denying climate change and undermining environmental stewardship will not make the world a better place for our kids,” he said.
Carballo was part of a broad BU contingent at the rally. One hour before the march, 120 Medical Campus affiliates—faculty, students, staff, and alumni—thronged around a crimson BU banner outside the Boston Public Library before weaving up Dartmouth Street and Commonwealth Avenue and through the Public Garden onto the Common.
Dylan Tam (CGS’15, CAS’17) (from left), Shannon Walsh (CAS’18), and Manike De Wet (CAS’17) walking down the Commonwealth Avenue Mall on their way to Boston Common. “When people watch the coverage of this march,” said Tam, “they’ll see people of all genders and ages and races—and see that scientists are real people.” Photo by Cydney Scott.
“Last time I did this, it was impeaching Nixon,” mused Lee Wetzler, a School of Medicine professor of medicine and microbiology. What got his legs working again more than four decades later was not just the current president and his stance toward science, but the general anti-intellectualism he sees in the public square.
“The thing that bothers me the most,” Wetzler said as a band serenaded the crowd on the Common, “is that all of a sudden, being knowledgeable and understanding facts and basing what you do on facts has become abnormal.” Experts are derided as an elite, he said, which strikes him as odd. “You go to a doctor not because they’re somebody you want to have a cup of coffee or a drink with,” he said. “You go to them because they know what they’re doing,” adding that “biomedical science has probably saved more lives than any travel ban.”
While march organizers had urged a proscience, nonpartisan message, some marchers didn’t hide their anger at the current president. “I’m Pissed That Natural Selection Gave Us Trump,” read the sign held by Kathleen Lacey (CAS’21), whose mother works at the School of Public Health.
Given some scientists’ concern that the march could come off as a partisan assault on the Republican White House and Congress, Lacey thought twice about her word choice, but opted to go ahead because she wanted her message to be “direct and to the point.”
MED postdoctoral fellow Annina DeLeo chose a more generic message for her sign—“Science, Not Silence”—with hand-drawn illustrations based on a childhood favorite, The Magic School Bus book series. (The sign depicted Miss Frizzle, the series’ magical and science-obsessed teacher, as the Statue of Liberty.) “I read those books over and over again as a kid; it’s a big part of why I’m a scientist,” DeLeo said.
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Authors, Rich Barlow can be reached at barlowr@bu.edu and Barbara Moran at bmoran@bu.edu.