Many government and intergovernmental organisations express urgent concern that democracy is under threat and they look especially to universities as key institutions to protect these values and reinforce democratic practices and active citizenship. The meaning of democracy varies in different institutional, national and regional contexts but in broad terms its core features are rational use of and trust in science, valuing diversity and integration through education, civic engagement to enhance active legal, political and social citizenship, and governance systems that practice dialogue and participatory decision making.
Universities today often have a central role in political discourse but this rise in status has been accompanied by universities losing autonomy through greater political interference, an increasingly instrumental approach to education and research and threats to academic freedom and institutional integrity. This crisis challenges ideals such as educating critical thinkers, value-neutral research, and the imperative to tell the truth. Ongoing threats to universities에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™ integrity include demands that universities adhere to some politicians에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™ values and ethics, with critical researchers silenced or harassed into submission. Students에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™ activism has also pushed universities to take a stance on debates ranging from wars and ethnic clashes to heated diversity issues and moral values.
These tensions have exposed how universities themselves often fail to practice dialogue and participatory decision making. Reforms in recent decades have seen the emergence of authoritarian leadership and top-heavy bureaucratic structures that often leave faculty and students at the bottom of a hierarchy without an effective voice in the institution. How can universities be bastions of democracy if they do not practice it themselves? Fortunately there a few examples of higher education institutions that are participatory organisations and that can provide waymarkers for how universities can inspire democratic forms of governance.
Some universities are also developing new ways of interacting with their local society. There have been cases of university expansion that have been notoriously damaging, for example, displacing people from poor neighbourhoods to build new university facilities. Now there are experiments with how universities, along with neighbouring 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트˜anchor institutions에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™ can use their resources for local wealth creation and to enhance local people에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™s opportunities, incomes and security 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트“ the basic conditions for engaging in active citizenship. Whereas even well-intentioned research and teaching activities have sometimes been extractive, based on local people, rather than with or for them, now increasing attention is given to mutually beneficial relationships that are transformative of both parties.
The working group aims to create a research momentum by bringing together members of CHEF and DUN에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™s special interest group Higher Education in Policy and Practice (HEPP) along with others working on the public role, democratic governance and civic mission of universities. We will address the question: What are the political premises for the public role and democratic responsibility of universities, and, perhaps in contrast, what are the universities에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™ own visions and practices of societal engagement?
Activities
Discussion of Journal Praxis in Higher education Vol. 6 No. 2 (2024) Guest editors Jakob Egholm Feldt, Serge P. J. M. Horbach, S에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트ren S. E. Bengtsen, and Laura Louise Sarauw
DOI:
Discussion (with case studies) of how universities can use their education, research and material resources to enhance local people에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™s opportunities, incomes and security 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트“ the basic conditions for active citizenship. (A discussion that would hopefully feed into the Council of Europe에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트™s working group on The Democratic Mission of Universities)
Convenors
S에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트ren Bengtsen, Sue Wright and Laura Louise Sarauw
Members (all invited, none yet confirmed)
Barbara Grant, bm.grant@auckland.ac.nz
Andrew Gibson, gibsona@tcd.ie
Tessa DeLaquil, tessa.delaquil@gmail.com
Ron Barnett, ron.barnett@ucl.ac.uk
Lynn McAlpine, lynn.mcalpine@mcgill.ca
Gina Wisker, gw647@bath.ac.uk
Davydd Greenwood, djg6@cornell.edu
Jakob Feldt, feldt@ruc.dk
Sharon Rider, sharon.rider@filosofi.uu.se
Asger S에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트rensen, aso@edu.au.dk
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