Few events capture Washington gridlock more visibly than a government shutdown. While rare in the nation’s early history, shutdowns have become a recurring feature of modern politics—bringing uncertainty for federal workers, disruptions to public services, and ripple effects across the economy.
How It Started The modern shutdown era began in the 1970s after a new law, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, established a formal budget process. Before then, funding disputes didn’t usually halt operations. But a key shift came in 1980, when the Carter administration’s Justice Department concluded that, without approved appropriations, agencies had no legal authority to spend money. That ruling set the stage for shutdowns as we know them today.
Since then, the U.S. has endured more than 20 funding gaps, ranging from brief lapses over a weekend to the record-long 35-day shutdown of 2018–2019. Each one has highlighted the partisan battles over federal spending, immigration, healthcare, or other policy priorities.
Why They Happen Shutdowns occur when Congress fails to pass, and the president fails to sign, appropriations bills or temporary funding measures known as continuing resolutions. In practice, they reflect deeper political standoffs: one branch of government using the threat of a shutdown to force concessions on controversial issues.
They can be triggered by disputes over budget size, specific programs, or broader ideological fights. In many cases, the standoff ends when mounting political and economic costs make compromise unavoidable.
What Gets Impacted The effects of a shutdown are immediate and wide-ranging:
Federal Workforce: Hundreds of thousands of employees are furloughed without pay, while others deemed “essential” must work without immediate compensation. Public Services: National parks close, permits stall, museums shutter, and routine government operations—from food inspections to scientific research—are delayed. Economic Ripple Effects: Contractors lose revenue, local economies near federal facilities take a hit, and financial markets often react nervously. Extended shutdowns can even slow GDP growth. Citizens’ Daily Lives: From delayed tax refunds to halted small business loans, ordinary Americans feel the squeeze when government services pause. Why This Matters Government shutdowns are more than political theater—they expose the fragility of the budget process and the real consequences of partisan impasse. They highlight the dependence of millions of Americans on public services and raise questions about the cost of dysfunction in the world’s largest economy. Understanding why they happen and what’s impacted helps citizens gauge not just the politics of Washington, but also how governance—or the lack of it—touches everyday life.
Connect with our experts about the history, causes, and consequences of government shutdowns in America. Check out our experts here : www.expertfile.com
While attending the Expert Finder Systems International Forum (EFS), several notable themes emerged for me over the 2-day event. It's clear that many universities are working hard to improve their reputation by demonstrating the real-world impact of their research to the public and to funders, but it's proving to be a challenging task - even for the largest R1 universities. Many of these challenges stem from how institutions have traditionally organized their research functions, management systems, and performance metrics. Engaging faculty researchers in this process remains a significant challenge, despite the need for rapid transformation.
While this EFS conference was very well-organized and the speakers delivered a great deal of useful information, I appeared to be one of the few marketing and communications professionals in a room full of research leaders, administrative staff, librarians, and IT professionals. There's a certain irony to this, as I observe the same phenomenon at HigherEd marketing conferences, which often lack representation from research staff. My point is this.
We can't build better platforms, policies, and processes that amplify the profile of research without breaking down silos. We need University Communications to be much more involved in this process. As Baruch Fischhoff, a renowned scholar at Carnegie Mellon University, notes:
Bridging the gap between scientists and the public “requires an unnatural act: collaboration among experts from different communities” – but when done right, it benefits everyone. But first, let's dive in a little more into RIM's and Expert Finder Systems for context.
What are Research Information Systems (RIMs) Research Information Management systems (aka Expert Finder Systems) are the digital backbone that tracks everything researchers do. Publications, grants, collaborations, patents, speaking engagements. Think of them as massive databases that universities use to catalog their intellectual output and demonstrate their research capacity. These systems matter. They inform faculty promotion decisions, support strategic planning and grant applications, and increasingly, they're what institutions point to when asked to justify their existence to funders, accreditors, and the public.
But here's the problem: most RIM systems were designed by researchers, for researchers, during an era when academic reputation was the primary currency. The game has fundamentally changed, and our systems haven't caught up. Let's explore this further.
Academic Research Impact: The New Pressure Cooker Research departments across the country are under intense pressure to demonstrate impact—fast. State legislators want to see economic benefits from university research. Federal agencies are demanding clearer public engagement metrics. Donors want stories, not statistics. And the general public? They're questioning whether their tax dollars are actually improving their lives.
Yet some academics are still asking, “Why should I simplify my research? Doesn’t the public already trust that this is important?” In a word, no – at least, not like they used to. Communicators must navigate a landscape where public trust in science and academia is not a given. The data shows that there's a lot of work to be done.
Trust in science has declined and it's also polarized:. According to a Nov. 2024 Pew Research study, 88% of Democrats vs. 66% of Republicans have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in scientists; overall views have not returned to pre-pandemic highs and many Americans are wary of scientists’ role in policymaking.
While Public trust in higher education has declined, Americans see universities having a central role in innovation. While overall confidence in higher education has been falling over the past decade, a recent report by Gallup Research shows innovation scores highest as an area where higher education helps generate positive outcomes.
Communication is seen as an area of relative weakness for scientists. Overall, 45% of U.S. adults describe research scientists as good communicators, according to a November 2024 Pew Research Study. Another critique many Americans hold is the sense that research scientists feel superior to others; 47% say this phrase describes them well.
The traditional media ecosystem has faltered:. While many of these issues are largely due to research being caught in a tide of political polarization fueled by a significant rise in misinformation and disinformation on social media, traditional media have faced serious challenges. Newsrooms have shrunk, and specialized science journalists are a rare breed outside major outlets. Local newspapers – once a reliable venue for highlighting state university breakthroughs or healthcare innovations – have been severely impacted. The U.S. has lost over 3,300 newspapers since 2005, with closures continuing and more than 7,000 newspaper jobs vanished between 2022 and 2023 according to a Northwestern University Medill Report on Local News. Competition for coverage is fierce, and your story really needs to shine to grab a journalist's attention – or you need to find alternative ways to reach audiences directly.
The Big Message These Trends are Sending We can’t just assume goodwill – universities have to earn trust through clear, relatable communication. Less money means more competition and more scrutiny on outcomes. That's why communications teams play a pivotal role here: by conveying the impact of research to the public and decision-makers, they help build the case for why cuts to science are harmful.
Remember, despite partisan divides, a strong majority – 78% of Americans – still agree government investment in scientific research is worthwhile. We need to keep it that way.
But there's still a lot of work to do.
The Audience Mismatch Problem The public doesn't care about your Altmetrics score. The policymakers I meet don't get excited about journal impact factors. Donors want to fund solutions to problems they understand, not citations in journals they'll never read.
Yet our expert systems are still designed around these traditional academic metrics because that's what the people building them understand. It's not their fault—but it's created a blind spot.
"Impact isn't just journal articles anymore," one EFS conference panelist explained. "It's podcasts, blogs, media mentions, datasets, even the community partnerships we build." But walk into most research offices, and those broader impacts are either invisible in the system or buried under layers of academic jargon that external audiences can't penetrate. Expert systems have traditionally been primarily focused on academic audiences. They're brilliant at tracking h-Index scores, citation counts, and journal impact factors. But try to use them to show a state legislator how your agriculture research is helping local farmers, or explain to a donor how your engineering faculty is solving real-world problems? There's still work to do here.
As one frustrated speaker put it: "These systems have become compliance-driven, inward-looking tools. They help administrators, but they don't help the public understand why research matters. The Science Translation Crisis Perhaps the most sobering observation came from another EFS Conference speaker who said it very plainly.
"If we can't explain our work in plain language, we lose taxpayers. We lose the community. They don't see themselves in what we do." However, this feels more like a communication problem masquerading as a technology issue. We've built systems that speak fluent academic, but the audiences we need to reach speak human. When research descriptions are buried in jargon, when impact metrics are incomprehensible to lay audiences, when success stories require a PhD to understand—we're actively pushing away the very people we need to engage.
The AI Disruption Very Few Saw Coming Yes, AI, like everywhere else, is fast making its mark on how research gets discovered. One impassioned speaker representing a university system described this new reality:
"We are entering an age where no one needs to click on content. AI systems will summarize and cite without ever sending the traffic back." Think about what this means for a lot of faculty research. If it's not structured for both AI discovery and human interaction, your world-class faculty might as well be invisible. Increasingly, you will see that search traffic isn't coming back to your beautifully designed university pages—instead, it's being "synthesized" and served up in AI-generated summaries. I've provided a more detailed overview of how AI-generated summaries work in a previous post here. Keep in mind, this isn't a technical problem that IT can solve alone. It's a fundamental communications challenge about how we structure, present, and distribute information about our expertise.
Faculty Fatigue is Real Meanwhile, many faculty are experiencing serious challenges managing busy schedules and mounting responsibilities. As another EFS panelist commented on the challenges of engaging faculty in reporting and communicating their research, saying, "Many faculty see this work as duplicative. It's another burden on top of what they already have. Without clear incentives, adoption will always lag."
Faculty researchers are busy people. They will engage with these internal systems when they see direct benefits. Media inquiries, speaking opportunities, consulting gigs, policy advisory roles—the kind of external visibility that advances careers and amplifies research impact. And they require more support than many institutions can provide.
Yet, many universities have just one or two people trying to manage thousands of profiles, with no clear strategy for demonstrating how tasks such as profile updates and helping approve media releases and stories translate into tangible opportunities. In short, we're asking faculty to feed a system that feels like it doesn't feed them back. Breaking Down the Silos Which brings me to my main takeaway: we need more marketing and communications professionals in these conversations. The expert systems community is focused on addressing many of the technical challenges—data integration, workflow optimization, and new metadata standards — as AI transforms how we conduct research. But they're wrestling with fundamental communication challenges about audience, messaging, and impact storytelling.
That's the uncomfortable truth. The systems are evolving whether we participate or not. The public pressure for accountability isn't going away. Comms professionals can either help shape these systems to serve critical communications goals or watch our expertise get lost in translation. ⸻
Key Takeaways Get Closer to Your Research: This involves having a deeper understanding of the management systems you use across the campus. How is your content appearing to external audiences? —not just research administrators, but the journalists, policymakers, donors, and community members we're trying to reach.
Don't Forget The Importance of Stories: Push for plain-language research descriptions without unnecessarily "dumbing down" the research. Show how the work your faculty is doing can create real-world benefits at a local community level. Also, demonstrate how it has the potential to address global issues, further enhancing your authority. And always be on the lookout for story angles that connect the research to relevant news, adding value for journalists.
Structure Expert Content for AI Discoverability: Audit your content to see how it's showing up on key platforms such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT. Show faculty how keeping their information fresh and relevant translates to career opportunities they actually care about.
Show Up at These Research Events: Perhaps most importantly, communications pros need to be part of these conversations. Next year's International Forum on Expert Finder Systems needs more communications professionals, marketing strategists, and storytelling experts in the room. The research leaders, administrators and IT professionals you will meet have a lot of challenges on their plate and want to do the right thing. They will appreciate your input.
These systems are being rapidly redesigned - Whether you're part of the conversation or not. The question is: do we want to influence how they serve our institutions' communications goals, or do we want to inherit systems that work brilliantly for academic audiences but get a failing grade for helping us serve the public?
The First Amendment is more than just words on paper — it’s a bedrock of American democracy. Adopted in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, it protects fundamental freedoms: speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition. Its influence ripples through every aspect of civic life, shaping what citizens can say, believe, hear, and demand from government.
How It Started In the wake of the Revolutionary War and under the new Constitution, many Americans worried that the federal government could become too powerful — especially over individual rights. To allay those concerns, the Bill of Rights was proposed. The First Amendment was among those first protections ratified in December 1791, explicitly forbidding Congress from making laws that establish religion, restrain free speech or press, or curb the rights of people to assemble and petition their government.
Over time, this compact set of protections has been tested, expanded, and clarified. Landmark court decisions and historical crises—from the Sedition Act era in the 1790s, World Wars, civil rights struggles, to modern debates—have shaped how these freedoms are understood in practice.
What It Means Today For citizens, the First Amendment offers more than legal guarantees: it gives voice. It underpins political debate, dissent, journalism, artistic expression, religious diversity, protests—and it enables citizens to hold power accountable. At school, at work, on social media, in place of worship, or in the press, these freedoms allow Americans to share ideas, critique policy, and petition for change.
But First Amendment rights are not unlimited. Legal doctrine has evolved to balance free speech with other social interests—such as national security, public safety, protection from defamation, or decency norms. The courts continue to adjudicate what constitutes protected speech, what kinds of regulations are permissible, and how emerging issues—like the internet, social media, and new forms of communication—fit into long-standing legal principles.
Why This Matters The First Amendment remains essential because it shapes both the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Without it, political dissent—vital to healthy democracy—can be stifled. Without free press, government actions may go unchecked. Without freedom of religion and conscience, personal beliefs may be coerced or marginalized.
As society changes—through technology, demographic shifts, and cultural dialogues—these freedoms are continually negotiated. Understanding the First Amendment helps individuals understand their power and limits. It shows why protests matter, why journalism matters, why speaking up matters. It also frames why legal protection matters in areas such as whistleblowing, religious diversity, and minority rights.
Connect with our experts about the history, protections, and current significance of the First Amendment for all Americans: Check out our experts here : www.expertfile.com
