They also have to perform a perilous balancing act, for they are caught between supporting honest and responsible research and the political reality of state funding. The ethical quality of and morale within a university depend on the character exhibited when these ideals, the tectonic plates of shifting cultures and economies, collide. The Wyoming case is merely the most current example. In her book, The Western Range Revisited , Professor Donahue argues that on some BLM lands livestock grazing should be reduced to protect wildlife habitat. Of course, academics operate in one cultural and economic context, ranchers in quite another.
Professors live on transfers from the public, but ranchers sell products in open markets.
Academics thrive when their scholarly and grant-generating activities are recognized and respected by their peers. Ranchers, however, survive, and occasionally prosper, when their costs of production are markedly less than the prices received. Ranchers, through no fault of their own, have fallen on hard times. Hence they are highly sensitive to cost-enhancing threats. The ranchers see Professor Donahue as an especially odious threat.