The international gathering at Dublin City University is a unique opportunity for higher education leaders to explore how colleges and universities can work with local and global partners to create more just, equitable, inclusive, sustainable democratic societies.
It is crucial to embrace these multiple realities simultaneously: that higher education is deeply implicated in reproducing systemic discrimination and racism in the United States and around the world
and, as we imagine what could be next, higher education is distinctly positioned to help build and develop the infrastructure, resources, values and education systems necessary for diverse, inclusive, antiracist democracies. And there are examples of students, faculty and staff engaged in that work.
In this moment of disruption, postsecondary leaders, students, faculty and staff might humbly consider four steps to advance antiracist, diverse and just democracies locally and globally.
No. 1: Redesign universities to focus on the development of students who help create antiracist democracies around the world. Although postsecondary institutions will always play a vital role in social mobility, the pandemic has made it clear that the most important thing K-12 and higher education can d
Academic responsibility: The changing mission of HE
A profound change is taking place in our understanding of the mission of higher education. Increasingly, we have realised that academic freedom must be accompanied by the exercise of academic responsibility, in the sense of making a contribution to civil society. Actively responding to societal challenges is one way of doing so – as many universities have demonstrated in the case of COVID-19.
It is by now a commonplace remark that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything, everywhere. We should all prepare for a ‘new normal’.
This is true, in particular, for residential universities, whose beautiful and comfortable campuses, in which they have invested so much care and money, were suddenly swept clean of students and professors in early 2020.