I LOVE SCIENCE

Statement in Support of Science for the University of Arizona Science Lecture Series 2025

As an advocate for new relationships between art and science, I was delighted to see our College of Science Lecture Series once again partner with the University of Arizona Poetry Center this year. I was invited to write a poem for the first lecture on the “Can We Talk?” theme, this one on canine communication. You can find this and all the talks on the COS YouTube channel. And I did present my new poem “The Eloquence of Dogs.” Plus, I felt an imperative to speak on behalf of science, as a person who is not a scientist but understands its importance to our well-being and the future of the planet.

Here are those words—with just a few added and quite possibly more to come:

I love Science.

I was a Polio Pioneer in the first cohort of children who in 1954 received the Salk vaccine. This meant that the images of children in iron lungs that had haunted my childhood remained just that, hauntings, not a reality.

Now we are seeing science suppressed, politicized, and betrayed by policies that have led to the firing of scientists working on tracking extreme storms that threaten our communities, the dangerous potentials of new influenza epidemics, as well as TB, HIV, and malaria in disadvantaged communities, the chemicals and microplastics that pollute our drinking water, the agricultural pests that threaten our food crops, biodiversity conservation, which means our animal kin and the entire web of life by which we are given the privilege of living, and even the nuclear scientists who safeguard our terrifying arsenal of doomsday weapons. And that’s just for starters.

We need science. If you too love science—and you probably would not be here unless you do—I urge you, in whatever sphere of influence small or large that you have, to raise your voice to protect science, science literacy, and scientific research, including the groundbreaking work done at this institution that we celebrate with this series.

3/6/25