AN ACAD E M I C I N AN ACTIVI ST COALITI ON: R ECOG N I Z I NG AN D B R I DG I NG ROLE CON FLICTS Josiah Heyman University of Texas at El Paso On the basis of participant-observation in an immigrant human rights coalition, this contribution offers reflections on the opportunities and challenges of being an academic in a politically active coalition. It first examines the ways in which university scholars can encounter rich fields for social scientific learning by engagement with coalitions in the communities that surround them, offering an alternative to the ivory tower model of anthropology done in distant fields. It then explores the challenges of coalition involvement through the theme of role expectations and conflicts. Among the topics examined through participant-observation are role expectations conflicts, time or schedule conflicts, resource tensions, legal and bureaucratic limits, social status inequalities, reduction of name visibility and ego gratification, and complex negotiations and compromises. It finishes with observations on commitment and objectivity, and proposes that coalitions shape particular forms of knowledge creating and communicating processes. These are real issues, but not insurmountable ones, and an honest accounting of them will result in more effective and rewarding coalitions between activists and academics. [immigration, human rights, U.S.–Mexico border, public policy, engaged anthropology] ACAD E M I C–N ONACAD E M I C COALITI ON S This article focuses on the particular issues of academics participating in nonacademic, social justice or human rights coalitions. In addition to issues for coalitions generally, there are particular issues stemming from the interaction of academic roles, worldviews, and resources with the different ones of nonacademic coalition partners. The goal here is to catalog these issues, drawing on my participant-observation as a member of several human rights coalitions addressing border migration enforcement in the United States. More broadly, this is a contribution to documenting and analyzing actual cases of engaged anthropology. Charles Hale () lays out the central arguments for activist scholarship as an appropriate scholarly practice, in particular the knowledge gained by close relationships and intimate engagement in organizational and community activities. I take the justification of activist scholarship as a given. My focus is on close analysis of the realities of such work. What patterns, analyzed social-scientifically, might be usefully learned and communicated to other scholar-practitioners? What are the contradictions, challenges, and opportunities of engaged scholarship in practice? A fundamental feature of coalitions is that they are made of diverse parts (Van Dyke and McCammon ). That is a key to their strength, as well as their fragility. I focus here C  by the American AnthroANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE , pp. –. ISSN: -X.  pological Association. DOI:./j.-...x 136 Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition on forging together the academic and nonacademic parts. I conceive of the challenges and benefits as matters of role combinations and contradictions. Each member of the coalition, anthropologist included, has role commitments and performances toward the coalition, but also roles outside the coalition, in some cases, contradicting the coalitionoriented roles. Behind all those roles are other elements of diversity—worldview and values, knowledge, interpersonal and communicative style, resources, and so forth. No analysis will erase the complexity of roles when engaging in coalition work, but having ways to diagnose and understand these issues will likely make us more effective in social change. Coalition work is nearly essential for engagement of academics with social and political issues outside the university. One can envision some types of extension and clinical work done by university agencies without outside allies (although it is better to have such collaborations). But in the vast majority of cases, coalition work provides the opportunity for action that goes beyond internal university practices such as teaching and research aimed at knowledge for its own sake. The academic–nonacademic coalition potentially brings together strengths and activities of both sides in ways that are stronger, on behalf of social change, than either one in isolation. Yet there is little literature in anthropology on the dynamics of academic–nonacademic coalitions; what there is emerges as a byproduct of case studies oriented to other goals (a particularly insightful example is Martı́nez ). The foundational case studies of anthropologists in social change coalitions were produced by nonacademic practitioners (Hackenberg and Hackenberg ; Schensul , ). These provide us with valuable insights (e.g., both cited studies show the great political value of assembling diverse alliances), but the specificity of academic– nonacademic coalitions remains to be analyzed. Anthropology has a long tradition of doing research in distant places. Obviously, the rich countertradition of anthropology at home (e.g., U.S. anthropology in North America) challenges this. Academic–nonacademic coalitions for social change can emerge either in locales distant or close to home. But anthropologists, and social scientists in general, make surprisingly little use of the undeniable fact that there is society and culture right outside our door. No institution of higher learning that I know of lacks compelling questions of social justice and social change right down the street (Pulido ). We sometimes are paralyzed (or alienated) by the geographic distance of the topic we are trained to work on, or have a specialized interest in. Local coalitions can be a valuable entry point. Likewise, academic traditions often value knowledge for its own sake, although there are alternative traditions of applied and action research (Greenwood ). Academic–nonacademic coalitions are thus central to getting out of our own cozy campuses, and out into our surrounding communities. Yet operating within them is complex and challenging, with recurrent issues that need to be specified and analyzed. After a short section describing issues on the border, the value of a coalition response, and my own involvement, I characterize some benefits of academic–nonacademic coalition work. Then I turn to the challenges and contradictions of coalition involvement for academics. This is illustrated in a subsequent section by three brief case studies of role tensions and how I approached them. I conclude with some thoughts on an old chestnut Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition 137 of academic debate, objectivity–subjectivity with respect to politically engaged work, offering some modest new insights drawn from the notion of interpersonal commitment that is central to coalition work. I N V O LV E M E N T I N B O R D E R C O A L I T I O N S A S E T H N O G R A P H I C R E S E A R C H I have allied myself since  with the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR), a community-based immigrant rights organization in El Paso, Texas and southern New Mexico. Through the BNHR, I have participated in a shifting set of coalitions, first the Border and Immigration Task Force (BITF; Heyman et al. , and examples of task force products are U.S.–Mexico Border and Immigration Task Force , ) and then the Southwest Border Communities Coalition (SBCC). The focus of all these groups is on human rights, including U.S. constitutional rights, of border community residents and migrants through the region, in the face of massive U.S. border enforcement. My work with the BNHR and SBCC are two different sorts of coalition engagements, and in the analysis below, I draw lessons from both interactions. BNHR is a single organization, but has a largely Spanish-speaking, recent immigrant, working-class membership, organized in a pyramidal structure of local committees, regions, and a small central professional office, guided by an annual general assembly, and funded by grants from large human rights and social justice foundations (see Heyman ; www.bnhr.org). I am thus one outside ally (of many) of a cohesive entity, very close to the leadership and some members of the organization. I am currently President of the Board of Directors. BITF, SBCC, and the looser group of border stakeholders (see N. ) are coalitions themselves, not cohesive organizations. In that case, I enter as a single person (but closely affiliated with BNHR) into a looser coalitional network, with its own complex dynamics. BITF was a coalition of individual civil society actors, such as politicians, law enforcement officials, religious leaders, and others. The border stakeholders and SBCC are largely coalitions of organizations, such as human rights advocacy organizations from different border regions, although some freestanding individuals like myself participate in them. In either case, they have complex interactional dynamics, to which the academic–nonacademic pairing is added. Key members of these groups, however, are socially similar to me, being largely educated professionals (e.g., lawyers), although not academics. The diversity of my experience adds to the richness (if also complexity) of the reflections and analysis here. I have participated intensively with these organizations and coalitions since . This long period of involvement is appropriately regarded as participant-observation. The ethnographic perspective here is limited and shaped in important ways by my specific placement in the coalition (e.g., I know BNHR intimately vs. some other organizations in the stakeholders network only from outside interactions), rather than ranging around independently doing interviews as in more traditional fieldwork practice. At the same time, I am genuinely engaged in direct, ongoing action sequences and conversations—not as a stranger, attempting participant-observation—so what I have learned generally has high validity. Ethnographically, there are robust grounds for the discussion that follows. 138 Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition I obviously would not have this knowledge if I did not participate in the coalition, but also I face the constraint that as an ongoing coalition member I cannot reveal everything I know or surmise. At times, I speak in abstractions so as to protect confidentiality and to avoid intracoalitional and coalition–noncoalition conflicts. T H E VA L U E O F F O R M I N G C OA L I T I O N S I N U . S . B O R D E R C O N T E X T S The U.S. borderlands with Mexico face a nested set of issues (see Andreas ; Nevins ). In the broadest view, there is an enormous system of police and military force assembled at the border, one that has undergone an extraordinary expansion since late . Many components could be identified but two of the most telling are over , Border Patrol officers (the largest uniformed federal police force) just in this region, and an -mile wall. Specific initiatives are also troubling: these include the continual deployment of the U.S. military in operations that verge on civilian law enforcement; and the use of law enforcement grants and programs to give incentives for local law enforcement to block roads and sweep streets to target immigrants for turnover to federal authorities, without meaningful criminal charges. The broad patterns of enforcement cause serious, well-documented human harms. Many can be cited; the worst, and most illustrative, are the approximately  to  annual deaths (a conservative estimate) caused by displacement of unauthorized migratory flows into dangerous desert and mountain crossing routes (Cornelius ; Eshbach et al. , ). But there are also serious, if less dramatic, problems of everyday violations of civil liberties and human rights (BNHR ). Thus, nested within the big picture challenges of the border are fine-grained issues of the conduct of federal law enforcement in a region saturated with it. The populations affected by these concerns include both long-distance migrants crossing the border in their journeys from interior Mexico to interior United States, and local resident populations (in a region of eight million) of varying citizenship and immigration statuses. The fundamental question for borderlanders, however, is whether they have a voice in the federal law enforcement policy process, given that the major decisions, programs, budgets, and bureaucracies are centered in Washington, D.C., driven by the politics of the U.S. interior. Borderlanders face a profound democratic deficit vis-à-vis these matters. In my view, values cannot be removed from the practice of the social sciences (Heyman , ). Three value frameworks inform the border rights coalition work. Timothy Dunn () describes a global (nonnational) human rights framework. Dunn’s angle is secular, but there are related religious universals (e.g., human dignity before God) included in the coalition (see Hondagneu-Sotelo ). By contrast, Fernando Garcia (), the Director of the BNHR, points out that the treatment of immigrant and minority communities in the borderlands is a crucial test of U.S.-based civil liberties and human rights within a national context, especially vis-à-vis overweening federal power. And my own work has articulated a non–rights based view, emphasizing relational morality between migrants and hosts, centered on activities and connections that cause mutual human recognition, empathy, and moral obligation (Heyman ). Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition 139 Border rights coalitions aim to redress the patterns of democratic deficit affecting the region. There are three needs for coalitions in this context. Borderlanders are politically marginalized for several reasons. They are socially marginalized, as overwhelmingly Latina/o (Mexican-origin) communities with low average income and education levels compared to much of the rest of the United States. And they are geographically marginalized, nationally as a region of eight million in a nation of  million, and within particular states, in which border communities are always demographic minorities and historically politically weak. Although the broad objective conditions cannot be changed, coalition formation does convey some size and presence to borderlanders. The U.S. borderlands is also fragmented along its East–West axis into separate geographic subregions that do not easily communicate, share experiences and strategies, and unify in coordinated action. In the domain of rights vis-à-vis law enforcement, the –present SBCC is the first ever to unify the major subregions of San Diego, eastern California, southern Arizona, southern New Mexico, El Paso, and south Texas. Using a coalition approach to address border issues has provided several positive synergies. For example, multiple issues can be addressed in a mutually supportive fashion. Currently, four working groups are negotiating suggested improvements with the same NGO office at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which includes the Border Patrol. (The NGO office was created precisely to respond to the border stakeholders’ pressure.) These groups are addressing training, complaints, and officer supervision– evaluation; community relations; deaths and other crossing hazards; and short-term custody. No one issue or set of advocates would have the same presence at CBP as the coordinated coalition effort does. Coalitions also allow sharing of various resources (although tensions over resource sharing, along with tensions over leadership and recognition, also pose threats to coalitions). Among things shared in the border coalition have been money (e.g., for travel to Washington, D.C., and regional meetings); staff support; political connections (both legislative and administrative); media contacts; and public legitimacy (e.g., the morally compelling issue of crossing deaths cross-promotes other, less-exciting but vital agendas). Related to this is that coalitions enable variously placed (socially, politically) persons to join together in a way that effectively claims legitimacy because of the involvement of diverse sectors. The Border and Immigration Task Force presented itself, appropriately, as a diverse cross section of border society, by including organized immigrant and community members, elected officials, law enforcement officials, religious figures, labor union members, lawyers, environmentalists, academics, and immigrant service providers. Besides the representational value of such coalitions, there is valuable exchange of connections and expertise. The business sector has been absent, however, possibly to avoid being seen in public on controversial issues, although they in fact are deeply implicated in border and migration matters. BNHR has had a recognized voice in Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas policy processes, although not as a coalition but through its self-presentation as a large, organized group of community members. In this regard, I am not important, although I have 140 Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition worked behind the scenes with the community representatives to formulate their ideas into clear, strong policy demands. However, the BITF and later the Stakeholders have had an impact precisely because of their self-presentation as a diverse range of significant sectors in the borderlands. We have been told several times that the range and socialpolitical importance of coalition members has impressed people in Washington, and has opened doors (to the White House, Department of Homeland Security, and the Senate and House). In this, I have been visible, although clearly I am not an important borderlander in representational terms (e.g., by contrast with the El Paso County Attorney and Sheriff ). My role again has been as policy analyst, but also upfront presenter and respondent to questions. The BNHR (acting politically as a representation of the immigrant community) and the BITF–stakeholders (acting as a representation of the allied host community) have been effective as a combination, perhaps more so than either one alone. We have some accomplishments—our  and  policy documents (U.S.– Mexico Border and Immigration Task Force , )—were translated in substantial part into language in the Title  (enforcement and border policy section) of three major comprehensive immigration reform bills (the STRIVE Act of , the CIR ASAP Act of , and the CIR Act of ). The political climate, however, has prevented any of these bills from passing. W H AT C A N A C A D E M I C S B R I N G T O N O N A C A D E M I C C O A L I T I O N S ? In the literature on engaged social science, there is a widespread emphasis on communitybased research (e.g., Hale ; Lassiter ). This is valuable and in some cases vital. But the emphasis on it replicates the dominant ideology of academics as original knowledge producers. Observing what I have contributed, which is modest, other qualities as an academic come to the fore. I do a good deal of policy writing, for example. Certainly, others can do this writing; there are numerous well-educated professionals in the network. But academic habits include the ability to study, analyze, synthesize, and present (orally and in writing) distinct bodies of knowledge—for example, in the form of policy documents. Of course, I almost never write such documents alone. I draw on large numbers of points, issues, and observations that field-based human rights advocates provide. Drafts that I produce are carefully reviewed by other members of the coalition, with many revisions. They are a collective product, not published under my name. This differs significantly from standard academic practice. Often, this policy process involves the ability to learn quickly and efficiently from secondary sources. This is, of course, an important habit of scholars, but one that is a bit hidden by the academic myth of producing original knowledge or of esoteric or specialized expertise. Recently, for example, I have been consuming and synthesizing literature on police training for recommendations the border stakeholders are making to Customs and Border Protection. This is not my area of research or expertise, but as a well-prepared scholar, I am a capable user of such literature. I am a specialist in U.S. border enforcement, especially immigration enforcement. Clearly, I can bring this to my work in the coalition, but not because I have knowledge that is altogether different from Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition 141 my coalition partners. They are human rights activists, working constantly in the field; in many ways, then, they have richer and more up-to-date knowledge than I do. I have a certain overall framework and an analytical perspective stemming from my scholarly training—again, not altogether unique in the coalition—which helps sometimes with moments of insight and synthesis. An example has been my analysis of bureaucratic politics to our strategizing about DHS organizational politics. Conversely, of course, I am constantly learning from the observations and analyses of others. In general, what makes coalitions effective is bringing together diversity in a cohesive fashion, with effective interchanges, toward a broadly shared goal. I bring some scholarly knowledge and especially scholarly habits and skills, to a coalition that provides other important resources. These include a mobilized grassroots base (BNHR and other regional organizations), field-based knowledge of human rights issues and legal expertise (SBCC), political connections (BITF and successors), and resources for various functions, such as travel to meetings (e.g., Washington, D.C.) and publication of policy reports (again, BNHR). I could not be engaged effectively without either collaborating with—and in important ways subordinating myself—either to one effective organization (BNHR) or to a wider coalition (the BITF and its successor coalitions). Standard academic practice is essentially ego centered, in that draws on and develops the capacities of the individual scholar, although perhaps in a collaborative team (even then, they are usually evaluated individually). This is in part because the individual scholar or small team has the full set of skills and opportunities to perform their activities. Engagement with nonacademic coalitions is humbling. In many ways, the scholar has only a small part to offer, a segment of a much larger whole, and cannot begin to do things like get political doors opened or speak as part of a “delegation” without that wider whole. At the same time, we do have a number of skills that can modestly contribute to the larger whole, which draw often on our deeply trained scholarly habits of analysis and synthesis. AN ACAD E M I C I N N ONACAD E M I C COALITI ON S: I S S U E S AN D CHALLE N G E S In what follows, I provide a series of observations and generalizations from a long, if sporadic, series of engaged activities, as well as my continuing academic work. The point is not to focus on myself but to use my experiences as a source for delineating the central issue here, the complicated role interactions between academic and nonacademic activities and social settings. The approach moves through a sequence of reflections and analytical points, rather than narrating coherent events, but it ends with a focused case study that illustrates the inevitable tensions in academic–nonacademic coalitions. The first point should surprise no social scientist, but still merits emphasis: coalitions have specific network shapes, in terms of persons and organizations, geographic locations, discourses and interests, roles, and resources both political and material (such as funding and personnel). I did not enter into the various coalitions as an actor free of positionality, but, rather, in situated and entailed ways. Careful analysis and monitoring of the network shape of the coalition and my place in it has thus been desirable and indeed 142 Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition necessary. I started first with BNHR, as a supportive ally in El Paso, and I remain most closely affiliated with them. I then entered the BITF and subsequent border stakeholders coalitions—bigger, border length networks of organizations and individuals—via my affiliation with BNHR. This has been positive: I could hardly have gained the political– governmental engagement, the information flow, the activity opportunities, the new personal connections, and the material resources (e.g., funded trips) without that entrée. And in all the subsequent engagements, I continue to share the policy and societal vision of the BNHR, which emphasizes two themes: an organized community base that gives overall direction, and pragmatic policy action grounded in human rights. But this means that within the wider coalition, I am (correctly) perceived as a BNHR affiliate. I consult with the BNHR Executive Director as a trusted advisor and Board President. Hence, I am a situated actor in various intracoalitional decisions and debates. Branching outward from BNHR, I have developed a semiautonomous set of activities, in particular as co-coordinator of the border stakeholders working group on Customs and Border Protection training, complaints, management, and supervision. But I cannot and do not act altogether autonomously from or at cross-purposes to BNHR. I therefore need to monitor the status of and balance my clear commitment to BNHR and my equally clear commitment to a wider network of coalition allies and coalition activities. One issue of NGOs generally is that they are rife with rivalries for funding, publicity, recognition, and links to key insiders (e.g., politicians). They also differ in value choices about issues, methods, and so forth. Obviously, this is both a strength of coalitions (diversity) and a weakness (conflict). Coalitions do not have a mandatory form (such as a university, which is a bureaucracy) to hold them together; they are a network of cooperative–rivalrous equals. All this matters to academics as part of coalitions only insofar as the internal politics of coalitions are dense and unavoidable; and specific placements into the network of the coalition will shape these experiences. As mentioned just above, BNHR has a specific organizational form (communitybased) and political philosophy (practical policy change for human rights goals). This contrasts with various other models, some found inside the border stakeholders coalition and some in individuals and groups not in this coalition. Among them are national organization-driven (top-down funded staff ) forms; “small band of activist” organizational forms; radical political philosophies and related modes of action; lawsuit centered modes; and service provision modes. To understand the coalition means being aware of these various organizational types, political-social analyses, and related modes of response; recognizing ways that the coalition involves multiplicity; and understanding the strengths and contradictions of this internal diversity. Foundation grants fund at BNHR a small paid staff and considerable organizational expenses, such as paying costs of coalition travel and meetings. Attention to foundation opportunities, interests, priorities, accountability, etc., thus also merits analysis in the engaged study of coalition work. A coalition always aims at gaining the strength of combination, rather than pure unity, and thus demands attention to the possibilities and challenges of diversity. Part of this diversity is that I am a full-time university professor, and a nonimmigrant. I thus contrast with two important types of actors in the coalition, paid staff dedicated Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition 143 to border and immigration issues and needs, and members of immigrant communities. I resemble many others in the coalition who are volunteers (both immigrant community members and sympathetic native-born persons), and more specifically I resemble those volunteers who are part-time, balancing other full-time occupations. However, there is still much diversity within the jumbled category of volunteers. Hence, I attend here to the specific role integration and conflicts between being a volunteer coalition member and an academic. I have some advantages in terms of bridging these roles that are worth mentioning, because not all academics will have them. First, I am a tenured full professor, so that my career is not at risk if I divert some of my time and effort into engaged work (on the assumption that applied and engaged work is not specified as part of my assignments, which they are not). As I indicate below, there are serious time and effort conflicts between coalitions and university duties and expectations, and these could be more problematic for nontenured (part-time or tenure-track) faculty. I am department chair, which removes one layer of possible negative evaluation or intervention having to do with my coalition involvement, and neither my departmental colleagues nor the university administration has ever questioned it. This is, I think, because I work hard in my university roles, so that if we say that the role conflict has been bridged, it is at the cost of high levels of effort and stress. Second, my research and teaching specialty is border enforcement and migration, and U.S.–Mexico border studies more generally, and geographically my university is located in the border region. All of this means that there are reduced cognitive and practical disparities between my coalition engagement and my scholarly engagement. Nevertheless, direct political work is different in content and style (esp. being less theorized) than research and scholarly writing, and is more partisan than teaching that emphasizes careful, critical thinking, rather than set positions. In my career, I progressed from scholarly specialization to a related direct engagement. The path could conceivably be in the opposite direction: beginning with political engagement, and developing a new scholarly specialization. Even admitting that my case is not easily generalized, the basic point is that entering into coalitions is both a highly useful way of applying anthropology and filled with contradictions. For example, academic culture and social relations are broadly different from the frameworks within which other coalition partners are likely to operate. Academics have two basic cultural orientations and related social practices. They produce, consume, and value new knowledge, often with a substantial degree of abstraction and generalization. Coalition partners are usually more directed toward bounded, instrumental knowledge, often well-established knowledge, insofar as it is politically useful. This is not to say they are uncurious or nonintellectual, but their core practice is instrumental. Also, academics are oriented toward teaching, which is essentially a domination–subordination relationship (even when participatory elements are used) for effective learning. Coalitions have complex power relations, including ones where academics are the subordinate learners and operatives, but also brokers and creators, as I have been vis-à-vis organized immigrant community groups and spokespeople. Much of my practice consists of learning from 144 Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition BNHR member experiences and ideas, and translating them on behalf of the BITF– stakeholders into clear, practical policy formulations (e.g., see U.S.–Mexico Border and Immigration Task Force , ). Academics are oriented toward their own peer groups, either on their own campuses or in their professions. We exist substantially in a world of symbolic interactions in which peers exchange tokens of esteem. More rarely, academics seek such tokens from superiors or subordinates, such as students. Coalitions are precisely not made of such peers, because it is their diversity that provides their strength—which is not to say that coalition partners are never comparably educated and knowledgeable, as the largest set of my stakeholders coalition counterparts are college educated. In such coalitions, tokens of esteem are shared for other reasons, including immediate instrumental helpfulness in practical struggles and interior and exterior political positioning in coalitions. For example, I am currently coordinating a stakeholders group preparing training recommendations for Customs and Border Protection. Two of us have taken the lead in drafting the recommendations, and other working group members have sent emails of appreciation for this work. But the work will not in the end be attributed to any one drafter, and this differs significantly from the esteem exchange process for academics. Academic work focuses on individual accomplishments. We append our names to specific publications or grants, and are largely evaluated (formally, in the bureaucracy, but also, informally, among our peers) on the basis of where our name appears. That name appearance is likely to be the most powerful reward given to academics, because the material rewards are not particularly large (except in professional schools) nor are they affected much by specific direct accomplishments. Coalition work is almost always nameless, for individuals. Organizations are named, initiatives are named, but the work of individuals remains nameless, behind the scenes. In fact, tokens of esteem are constantly being sought and allocated, within and outside coalitions, and ego centrism is widespread, but all this is informal, a matter of subtle nods, and not a formalized system of naming, as in academia. These sociocultural differences between political coalitions and academia are not insurmountable, but they are real and significant; they are, indeed, more readily overcome when we recognize their presence and act to bridge them than when they are ignored or denied, and fester and divide. More pedestrian, but also important, is that employed academics face basic time, space, and work duty conflicts, as would any other part-time coalition member with other full-time obligations (Pulido ). University professor jobs are flexible, but are constrained by class times, meetings, and longer cycle obligations, such as various reports and other institutional tasks. Coalitions have their own objectives, their own activities, and thus their own space and time demands. It is often hard to reconcile the two. Conference phone calls are a modest distraction; several-day trips are a significant one. This is especially complex, as I have commitments to one organization (BNHR), a wider network of people and organizations (the stakeholders, currently), and particular tasks and working groups that emerge from both sources. My preference has been to work behind the scenes, to do analysis and writing, rather than frontline work for the border coalitions, as I find that more easily reconciled to my principal work duties. Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition 145 But increasingly, I have been directly involved in activities off campus. Partly, this constitutes field research, given that my scholarly specialty overlaps with my coalition work on border enforcement (e.g., taking a day off campus as part of a group trip to the Border Patrol Academy). Nevertheless, the conflicts of time and space demands from two different roles remain significant. My university expects me to be an excellent teacher, a productive scholar—including seeking funded research and publishing—and a capable administrator and department leader. My coalition expects me to be a capable information gatherer and analyst, a good and fast writer, and a collaborative strategist (e.g., in discussing goals and tactics). In various ways, it is possible to reconcile aspects of my work as a coalition member and as a university professor, but fundamentally these are two different sets of role expectations and related discourses and practices. I have reconciled this to some extent by publishing items like the present one, which draw on my engaged experiences to produce scholarly work. Still, I do not have a role frame in the university that rewards me for applied anthropology or community engagement as such. In some cases, it is possible to create such a role frame for faculty or staff. University administrators such as myself, who want to promote engagement, should seek to do just that, and then hire people into, support people in, and evaluate people under such expectations. Even then, this is never going to be perfect. Any university faculty or staff person will be appropriately expected to do their engaged work within a wider institutional mission—such as creating educational opportunities for students or obtaining funded research and creating scholarly products from it—and that is never fully going to match the expectations from nonacademic coalition partners. The opportunities I have had for seeking funded research—which of course are shaped by government agencies, in particular Homeland Security for the sort of work I do on migration—are very different from the goals of my coalition partners, so that I have maintained one track for seeking funding for research (e.g., on health) and another track outside the university assisting BNHR seek foundation funding for community organizers and office staff (my role is modest, and they do well themselves). It might be possible to insist on some BNHR funds going to me for students or research, but this would be ethically wrong, I think, as it is important to fund support staff and campaigns. There may at some point arrive a fortunate synergy of funding, but this is not currently the case, and certainly cannot be imposed on the relationship. Thus, we academics can only hope for a good enough, partial reconciliation, and institutionally, to promote the conditions under which it may be possible. The university that I work for prohibits use of university resources, which includes my work time and so forth, for lobbying. The BNHR does not lobby, as it is a (c) organization. It operates as a nonpartisan group, doing policy analysis and education. However, coalition members operate under various and sometimes different rules. I am scrupulous about following my university’s rules, reporting my activities, and doing any partisan political work on my own time and from my home. Beyond my immediate situation and the purely legal and bureaucratic limits, there are wider questions of what engaged scholars can and cannot, should and should not do with university resources. 146 Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition An example is students doing internships, service learning, fieldwork projects, and other sorts of activities that may be inserted into the work of a coalition. Clearly, this can appropriately serve educational goals, especially in a program with an applied social science component. However, an academic involved in a nonacademic coalition has two commitments, and it is important to be thoughtful about this situation. I have never faced these problems, but coalitions could err in not understanding the limits on university resources. Likewise, less powerful persons, such as students, need to have their interests and autonomy guarded from coercive demands or expectations. Role conflicts do not just impinge onto the academic side from the coalition; they go in the opposite direction also. A telling example of this is the status inequality and deference shown to me, indicated by the constant use of “professor” to refer to me, both as a term of address and of reference. This has different valences to diverse members of the coalition. Almost everybody offers me some deference, which also implies a degree of distance, but the effect is greatest on relatively less educated immigrant community members in BNHR. I strive to be relaxed and egalitarian in such situations, but the overall societal distance is palpable. In my role in the stakeholders coalition, I tend to work on public policy issues and thus interact more with educated NGO staff, volunteer advocates, and government counterparts, so the unavoidable presence of the educational ivory tower is somewhat diminished. I draw many understandings of underlying policy needs and issues from immigrant community members, however, and being able to bridge the status gaps is important to my role in the coalition. Recognizing our role involvement with coalitions speaks in some ways to the debated tension between commitment and objectivity (e.g., D’Andrade ; Scheper-Hughes ). I will not review here the wider arguments (see Hale ; Greenwood ). My concern here is to attend to the way coalition work has shaped, and in some ways deepened, the processes by which I produce knowledge about border enforcement. The knowledge creating process is in all instances affected by its social and cultural context, whether indirect and tacit commitments to the opinions of other academics and funders, or strong and immediate obligations to a coalition. In creating knowledge within coalition work, I do not falsify or distort what I learn and communicate. But I do learn and communicate through the specific social and political commitments that are part of this coalition. In , I published academic work on Border Patrol training as a form of organizational socialization that described but did not prescribe (Heyman ); in  and , I have learned far more and far better about that training (which also changed in the meantime). With that knowledge my coalition partners and I produced a prescriptive document that identifies gaps in preparation for adherence to human rights standards and delineates training topics and methods to make such changes. As much as my previous, scientific work, this applied work addresses big issues such as organizational socialization—how to modify it—but this disciplined inquiry is directed toward the shared goals of a coalition, and the various products are created collectively. My knowledge gathering process, analysis, and communication to audiences was thus conditioned Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition 147 by the social-political goals and network dynamics of the coalition, as opposed to the earlier academic work that was conditioned by the social goals and network dynamics of academic anthropology. My earlier work aimed at making a general point about how we should research and conceptualize bureaucratic power, and the everyday work of state officers within it. My recent work has aimed at how information and analysis of detailed points of organizational socialization leads to specific recommendations for change. Using both perspectives, and with the much greater information I have gained as a grounded activist than as a visiting ethnographer, my knowledge of border patrol society and culture has grown considerably. Yet in performing both academic and activist roles in knowledge gathering and analysis, I often experience role expectation conflicts, such as the urge toward abstraction when creating practical recommendations and the emergence of normative recommendations when doing analysis for scholarly audiences. Academics are relatively but incompletely autonomous professionals, set in hierarchical bureaucratic organizations (universities, etc.), but also having internal and external peers as a reference group. This places two limits on academics in coalitions: the fact that they are dominated within (and may dominate others in) a mandatory hierarchical organization, and cannot easily violate those relations of control; and the ways that their work practices are shaped by communally isolating scholasticism, regulated by the peer opinions of other, distant scholars. Coalitions are informal, socially controlled networks, the opposite of bureaucracies, although they may evolve weak forms of internal control and governance, or even change into formal organizations. They are also socially and culturally—and politically—diverse, although to varying degrees, which is the strength of coalitions. Their internal relations are formed and re-formed by constant negotiation within the network. They tend to be relatively short-lived, and are driven by some combination of values and specific political goals. They act for change in wider socialpolitical fields, and thus are not dedicated to an internal value such as knowledge for the academic peer group’s sake. Nonacademic coalitions thus inherently present a role contrast with academia. Role contrasts bring on role conflicts, but do not have to bring on separations and ruptures. Greater awareness and better understanding of social-cultural contrasts and role conflicts may actually make the coalition-academia bridge easier to build and maintain. COM PLE X P OS ITI ON I N G OF AN ACAD E M I C I N TH E U N IVE R S ITY AN D I N COALITI ON S: A CAS E STU DY Three incidents in my relationships with BNHR and the university illustrate some of the role combinations and conflicts of being in an in-between position. The first incident is background. My university was invited by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to apply for a large grant to set up a border security center, which it eventually did obtain. I was invited to the initial planning meetings, and then examined carefully the request for proposals from DHS. It was almost exclusively about how to apply security methods to 148 Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition immigration enforcement (to be precise, it was an awkward cut and paste of a solicitation for terrorism security research to the issue of unauthorized migration at the border). I decided that morally, I could not work within that frame, as advantageous as it would have been to my academic career and internal standing in the university. I expressed my concerns to the planning group, and declined further to participate. When the university decided to seek this funding (it was an inside political deal, brokered by our congressman), they created a center for homeland security studies, and later another for defense studies. It was set up to receive research funding (most has gone into the study of cybersecurity and sensor technologies) and funds to create undergraduate and graduate programs in national security. BNHR leadership consulted with me about whether this development could be blocked (e.g., by protests). I laid out my understanding of the situation. The university had been given an agenda by the state of Texas to double its externally funded “research” in a short period of time. The DHS money clearly spoke to that agenda. Furthermore, the university governance has little space for bottom-up governance, or even input. I did not discourage them from protesting, but I was not optimistic about it being effective. I expressed willingness to be part of a public initiative, such as a meeting with key administrators, which I thought would happen if requested, but I also assessed its impact as likely to be minimal, and indeed potentially co-optive. We also discussed the wider set of demands on the organization. This was at a time when there was a very promising opening in terms of formulating policy documents for Congress (see above) and delivering them to Washington. This required considerable organizational capacity from BNHR, and time and effort from me. We ultimately decided not to protest the university’s actions. Whether this is wrong or right is hard to tell. It does speak to my dual role: as an actor, inside the university, with an insider understanding of the politics driving this agenda and the limited possibilities for changing them, and with a relatively secure position but one that is still sensitive to internal politics, and as an ally of a social movement, with an understanding of their political setting, opportunities, tasks, and capacities. For a number of years, the El Paso congressman has sponsored a border security conference, for which the university provides space. Although there are public presentations, with viewpoints on policy issues from all sides, it essentially is a homeland security industrial trade show, dominated by large military contractors. The agenda comes out of the congressional office. The BNHR had asked to do a presentation to present immigrant community viewpoints on border enforcement one year, but were ignored. They decided to have a large demonstration outside the conference (essentially aimed at the congressional office, not as much the university). They would inform the university at a time when it was too late to prevent the action. I was informed about this decision; I did not express concerns, and actually informed them about university regulations concerning free speech, and did not move to undercut the event (e.g., by turning to university administrators with the news). My role in this case was more passive (informed, not asked to act), by design. However, I was placed in a position in between academic employment and coalition commitments. This is likely to occur whenever we balance university and engaged roles. Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition 149 CONCLUSIONS If we are to go beyond the confines of our academic homes, our institutions, courses, and peer groups, it is likely that we will do this through entering into coalitions with nonacademics. The very purpose of coalition engagement is that coalitions are outside our normal social relations, cultures, practices, and discourses. Their strength is synergy—of which we are part—and the synergy requires diversity. This means, however, that such engagement inevitably poses role conflicts. If we are to handle such role conflicts, in such ways as not to damage the coalition and our effectiveness in it, then we need a thoughtful and honest approach to such role conflicts. They include tensions around professional self-conceptualization and practice, loyalties to two different entities (home institution and network), time, space, and resource conflicts, and status inequalities. These will never disappear, but in many cases they are surmountable. That is why I refer to the process of recognizing “gaps” and finding ways to “bridge” them—the gaps remain, but we can effectively cross them. Coalitions involving academics can occur far distant from the university, and close to home. I think the issue is particularly pressing, however, in terms of doing applied and engaged social science right outside our front door, as it were (Pulido ). Universities are always set in social settings. Yet we spend so much scholarly effort in abstraction that we often lose track of the enormous number of possible forms of engagement that surround our institutional homes. We are aware of social phenomena at a “meta” level— as named abstractions in our work, as discourses shared with our peers, and as teaching and research agendas emerging from those two conditions—but not as an ongoing set of people and activities directly around us. We should not be ashamed of this—it is a necessary condition of our scholarly performance, including all that is valuable in it. But it is also a process of alienation from the world around us. Coalitions are a vital bridge from this domain of alienation back into the social world that grounds us, that fascinates us, and that gives us life. NOTE S Acknowledgments. I thank my coalition and community partners in BNHR, BITF, and SBCC. I also thank Chad Morris and John Luque for the invitation to write this article and for helpful comments on it. All responsibility for errors and interpretation remains my own. . Social change work in the university may also involve intraorganizational coalitions (e.g., Boucher  on the origins of social justice programs in universities) but the fact that there are overarching bureaucratic structures makes this very different from voluntary coalitions of nonbound organizations and individuals. . Because of disagreements over internal organizational approaches, BNHR is cooperating with but is not directly a member of the SBCC. The wider, looser coalition in which BNHR and I are participating is informally named the Border Stakeholders. . Of course, there are differing value assessments of this situation, and likewise different ways that organizations and coalitions have responded to this complex and difficult situation. I focus here on coalitions aimed at public policy, rather than or in addition to direct service and witness, and taking a reformist or pragmatic approach, rather than a radical or purist analysis. I have a separate essay manuscript discussing the choices of approach via autoethnography. 150 Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition . Of course, border issues—including migration—are transnational. Yet conventional political decision– frameworks are limited to nations. Conceivably, this could be addressed by a binational border coalition, but one has not emerged. Modest connections and conversations exist, but no more. This illustrates the power of the nation-state frame, both practically (the two coalitions addressed U.S.-side politicians and administrators only) and discursively emphasizing legitimacy as a voice inside the United States when migrants are often framed as illegitimate outsiders. The members of the border coalitions are often transnationals (e.g., Mexican nationals resident in the United States or dual citizens) but the action frame so far is national. . It merits noting that social movement coalitions need also to be understood in relationship to their counterparts. In our case, working on border and immigration law enforcement issues, that counterpart is the state, a complex web of actors, arenas, and bureaucracies. These include both legislative opponents and allies, and counterparts in the enforcement bureaucracy who interact with us on human rights debates. There is a valuable analysis to be done on how the interactive struggle with the state apparatus, processes, and ideologies actually shape this ostensibly oppositional coalition, but that remains for another time. . Importantly, the powerful Texas Association of Business has recently joined two coalitions, Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance (RITA) and the TRUST Coalition, in opposing anti-immigrant legislation. Those two coalitions are closely related to the Border and Immigration Task Force and its successors. RITA was launched by BNHR. . Elsewhere, Morales, Núñez, and I have pointed out that some of these communicative tasks draw on teaching skills hopefully cultivated by academics (Heyman et al. ). . Many paid staff also have multiple duties that create role conflicts with their specific coalition activities, which merits attention, but the distance is not usually as great as with volunteers who hold mainly unrelated jobs. . I should make clear that I do not personally completely reject DHS funded activities. For example, at the time of writing I have a pending proposal to them to do research on cross-border emergency management and related transnational social issues. I see these sorts of questions (the ethics of the source and agenda of funding) as matters of careful consideration, rather than knee-jerk reactions in one direction or another. REFERENCES CITED Andreas, Peter  Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide. nd edition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Boucher, Jean L.  There Will be Struggle: The Development and Operational Issues of Social Justice Programs at State Universities in the United States of America. 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Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Annals of Anthropological Practice 35.2/An Academic in an Activist Coalition 153