Political science professors are dealing with a rare phenomenon: Congress actually trimming back on a budgetary item.

When Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn’s amendment banned National Science Foundation funds for “political science” not specifically dealing with science, its impact was felt among academics across the country.

These academics are now trying to reverse the new rule. Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed offers these details:

… It would have been better for Congress to have simply said that it didn’t have enough money to fund political scnce thaien to say that the NSF could only approve grants that related directly to economic growth or national security, said Ira Katznelson, the Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University.

By imposing limits on political science, Katznelson said, Congress was attacking “the principles of academic self-governance.” He predicted that the move would “degrade the quality of scholarship.”

The cuts in NSF support are already having an impact. A grant from the NSF has helped the APSA and Duke University run a summer program — the Ralph Bunche Institute — to encourage minority students to consider advanced study and careers in political science. This year, the program wasn’t held due to the lack of NSF funds.

While APSA is planning to make up for the lost NSF funds next year for that program, the association can’t replace many grants — and so participants here were focused on how to reverse the measure. The provision in the budget bill is known as “the Coburn amendment,” after its sponsor, Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who has for years been trying to block NSF support for political science.

A number of efforts are being started to reverse the amendment. Howard J. Silver, executive director of the Consortium of Social Science Associations, said that his group, in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, foundations and others, are convening a meeting Wednesday to try to come up with ways to “take a shot at repealing Coburn and to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

The APSA is encouraging more grassroots lobbying by members, releasing a “tool kit” on how to write members of Congress, talking points on the NSF funding issue and tips on how to reach lawmakers for personal visits. The association is also encouraging members to invite members of Congress, when they are back in their districts, to sit in on political science classes to see what actually is going on in the discipline. And the association recently reached out to 150 university presidents to ask them to lobby on behalf of ending the Coburn limits. Further, the association is creating a new committee to consider the “public engagement” of political scientists.