Dear ABS colleagues:
When I walk around campus and greet my friends and colleagues with a “Hi! How are you?”, the response is often something on the order of “Fine…considering.” The constant onslaught of attacks on science and academia here in the United States can be both infuriating and exhausting.
How can the Animal Behavior Society help? As Emily DuVal stated in a mailing to the membership last year, we reaffirm that the values of ABS remain unchanged: we continue to support animal behavior research and all our members. How do we put those values into action? First, ABS remains committed to providing resources for researchers of all backgrounds, including programs that uplift underrepresented scholars and foster safe, inclusive spaces. We have an impressive suite of excellent member-driven programs to support animal behavior researchers at every career stage that we will continue to maintain, such as the Turner program for undergraduates, the SIGNAL Program for graduate students, and the WFAB Program for postdocs and junior faculty, plus grants, travel awards, and other recognitions. In addition, it is worth emphasizing in these times that ABS benefits tremendously from being an international organization with members from across the Americas. This was exemplified by the workshop and symposium at last summer’s conference, highlighting ethical collaborations and top-notch research performed in Latin America as we continue to learn from each other, celebrate accomplishments, and build bridges. All these activities and more are possible only because of our very engaged committees and I encourage you to consider volunteering.
Second, our individual voices are so important. We encourage U.S. citizens to provide public comments on pending rules and to contact your legislators about time-sensitive issues. To stay current about what’s happening, I recommend the American Institute of Biological Sciences site (https://www.aibs.org/policy/) .ABS is a member organization of AIBS, which advocates to Congress on behalf of biological sciences. You can sign up for their great biweekly newsletter. Some of you attended their presentation at our conference in Baltimore last summer where the speaker carefully explained the legislative process, the state of the budget for science, and effective strategies for communicating with representatives. I recently attended another AIBS workshop on resilience in these times, including how to seek alternative funding (here’s the recording and here are the slides). If you are on Bluesky, watch for action alerts from ABS (@animbehsociety.bsky.social).
Third, we’re beginning to plan for next summer’s meeting in Cincinnati, and we’re thinking about workshop leaders and member activities to help share strategies and ideas for coping with these challenges. For example, we heard from some Latin American colleagues at the Baltimore meeting about how they, by necessity, are very good at doing excellent science under budgetary constraints and would be happy to share ideas. I welcome your thoughts about how we can facilitate these conversations.
Finally, wherever you are, I hope you get a chance to step outside. Here in New England the leaves are starting to change, the beavers in the pond near my house are starting to stock up on twigs for their winter stores, and we arachnologists are collecting our spiders. May you too find some moments of reprieve in nature!
Best wishes for you and yours,
Beth Jakob
President
