On July 23, University of Illinois professor George Gollin announced his intent to enter the race for U.S. representative of the 13th Congressional District, a seat currently held by Republican Rodney Davis.

This news caught my attention as it’s not often that you hear of professors taking a leap into the world of politics. It has been my experience at least that many professors prefer to superficially mock politicians or remain smugly apolitical. In fact, the current 113th Congress only has 20 representatives with doctoral degrees, none of whom are in the Senate, interestingly enough.

Then imagine my surprise when I found out that the professor running is from the physics department. I certainly could have envisioned a polarized political science or law professor throwing their hat in the ring, but a physicist is something you don’t see every day.

Gollin is using his unique background as part of his platform. As he stated at his campaign announcement, “Washington has plenty of lawyers, I’m a teacher and a scientist. Certainly law is an honorable profession, but as a scientist, I was trained to discover the facts, and act on them. Lawyers, on the other hand, are trained to argue about the facts. I think we have enough argument in Washington already, and need more facts.”

I’m inclined to agree with him — and not just because I’m an engineering student who’s inherently biased toward people in the STEM fields. There really is much truth in what he said.

The economy will always be one of the main issues that voters hold their politicians accountable for. Economic growth is fundamentally tied in with technology, and thus having politicians who better understand the factors that enable technological innovation provide significant advantages to the country as a whole.

In Congress, Gollin would be able to contribute his knowledge as a physicist as well as his experience as an educator in the higher education system. There is so much debate about how to best educate America’s youth and how that plays into job creation. Who better to weigh in on these issues than a man who has spent years interacting with students face-to-face on a daily basis, and who has firsthand knowledge of our country’s educational and technological infrastructure?

The root of most of the gridlock in Washington today is due to politicians arguing for the sake of party identification instead of agreeing on the best solution for the American people. People with scientific backgrounds usually have developed superior critical thinking and problem solving skills through the nature of their work that allow them to excel at processing information and reaching definitive decisions.  Politicians with this more rigid mindset would hopefully help shift the focus back to coming up with solutions instead of sparking greater party divide.

Gollin, for instance, has spent years speaking out against so-called “diploma mills,” which are criminal organizations that sell fake academic degrees. He has researched the issue extensively and has even written a book on it. He assisted in creating a bill that was eventually proposed in the Senate, however as he explained, “Once the bill got out of a position where I was no longer able to influence it, politics and dirty money got in the way.”

Now Gollin may finally get the chance to influence the political forces that were previously beyond his control. The fact that he is fundamentally an academic would expectably make him less susceptible to the partisan pressures that the majority of career politicians are forced to align with.

This concept of having scientific minds make policy decisions is deeply woven into American history. Many of the founding fathers had deep scientific interests that helped them form the fundamental ideals that Americans identify with. Benjamin Franklin’s influence on electricity is obvious. However, it’s less known that George Washington was once a praised experimental farmer in Europe, and that John Adams received the finest science education available in America in his time, including courses in “Pneumaticks,” “Hydrostaticks,” “Mechaniks,” “Statiks,” and “Optiks.”

Thomas Jefferson once commented on the value of science to the Republic by noting, “the security it gives to liberty” and “its identification with power, morals, order, and happiness.”

All things considered, a scientist running for office shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. It’s really something we could use more of.

Andrew is a junior in Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected].