As we at ATREE conduct research on the environment, it would be fair to assume that we care about the environment, or would it? In the first lecture of the core ATREE PhD course called ‘Practising Interdisciplinary Research on the Environment,’ I usually ask the students how many of them are willing to call themselves ‘environmentalists’. Very few hands tend to go up. The same with the label ‘conservationists’. When I probe as to why, it seems that the students see environmentalists or conservationists as ‘activists’, which means taking sides, advocating policies, or staging protests or dharnas as we call them. Whereas, in seeking a PhD and probably careers in academia after that, the students believe that their role is to be a ‘scholar’, and thereby to shun such activism. When asked whether they ‘care’ about biodiversity loss or environmental degradation, the answer is of course in the affirmative. But they believe that it is both necessary and possible to study the environment as a ‘neutral’, ‘objective’ scientist, not as an activist holding subjective positions.