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The Role and vision of Future Academic
Community
by Sandy Title
"Visions" typically appear as numinous images
which are simple in themselves but profound in their symbolic associations.
"Roles" are more rationally chosen, defined and redefined on the
basis of evaluations of effectiveness and the recognition of changing
circumstances. Communities, like all real-world phenomena, are more rich and
various than our conceptual knowledge of them can represent.
While we are used to thinking of "the
academic community" in terms of the existing universities, there are many
other social institutions which are wholly or partly academic in nature, such
as schools, libraries, religious organizations, training organizations,
research organizations and even governments.
To the extent to which "socio-economic-political changes" are
consciously directed, such direction is provided in part by recognizably
academic processes at work in government, business and community organizations.
Socio-economic-political development is, according to the dominant, technocratic
consensus, based upon the increasingly sophisticated deployment of scientific
technology in the service of urban and consumerist values. There are many
variants of this consensus, some displaying more wisdom than others. How should we respond to this technocratic
vision?
We should begin by noting how much to affirm there is in the
more plausible variants of this dominant vision. Where scientific rationality
is defined in terms of self-correction through empirical testing rather than in
terms of a dogmatic
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materialist
ideology, at least a tentative assent seems appropriate to me. Where technology
is oriented towards the widespread meeting of basic human needs for food,
clothing, shelter and health care, those of us who are the beneficiaries of
this system should indeed be grateful for these benefits even while we
acknowledge the justice of questioning the costs that they impose on various
human groups and on the natural environment. In these examples, we see the
possibility that technology can supply a powerful base for future
community. These affirmations remain
equivocal, not because the benefits are not real and obvious, but because the
justice and sustainability of the emerging world order remains partial and
equivocal.
One visionary perspective on future academic community would
look to its role in providing intellectual leadership to the emerging global
society.
The creation of one world order establishes
tensions between those whom the order serves and those who are excluded in
various ways. Will the academic community, which relies upon established
socio-political forces for its being, find ways of reaching out to excluded groups while satisfying the requirements of the
powerful, established groups (which are usually implicated in this exclusion)?
Equally difficult are the tensions created by the uncertain ecological viability
of this new global order. At critical points such as these, questions of human
self-definition which are ultimately spiritual in nature come into view,
challenging the pragmatic and materialistic limitations of the emerging order.
There is a basic tension between the consumerist self-definition which is
largely presupposed by the technocratic decision makers and a range of other
possible collective self-definitions which would legitimate other global
directions.
The emerging new world order, informed by what I am calling
the dominant, technocratic version of the academic community, looks set to
function as an exploitative, acquisitive organism that chooses to down-play
challenges to its justice and sustainability. Despite the defects noted, we
should affirm the global perspective and the deployment of technology in the
service of human (and environmental) need as consistent with our own developing
vision. Technology for the destruction and/or domination of others (such as
armaments and instruments of torture) can provide a
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focus for developing a critical perspective on
the technocratic academy.
In terms of the above concerns, leadership for the academic community
can be provided on the basis of a systematic attention to whatever is
marginalized by the currently dominant socio-political forces. We are witnessing the emergence of dominant
knowledge’s and technologies which can be likened to the activities of the
conscious mind. These dominant knowledge’s and technologies, like the conscious
mind, are systematically ignorant of whatever their shape excludes. In the more
self-confident and elitist variants of technocracy, the reality of excluded and
exploited people and of the natural environment is ignored in favour of a
(self-serving) image of these realities. Even more significant for academic
community is the absence of a forum in which this misrepresentation can be
addressed. We need to seek a responsive knowledge of the fullness of our global
reality and not rest content with our inevitably partial and distorted images
of this reality.
In
practice (and here I speak primarily of the Australian experience), we are
witnessing a shift in the management of universities from a
"collegial!" model (admittedly, the collegiality of the elite group
of professors rather than a more general collegiality) to a
"management" model in which a central group of managers increasingly
seek the deployment of university resources to meet explicitly articulated
collective goals.
Government policies and patterns of funding are important
influences, but the traditional autonomy of the universities is increasingly
taking the form of the independent management of a business enterprise. One
consequence is that university life is increasingly being shaped by the
entrenched conflict between management and the National Tertiary Education
Union. An example of the effects of this process is the attack by management
upon academic tenure as a normal means of long term academic employment. While
there is something to be said in favour of a concern about the way that
academic tenure has restricted academic employment opportunities for younger
people, the conflictual model for change that has
been adopted is designed to entrench the power of the managers over the rest of
the academic community.
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The traditional ideal of the university as
a place for the open communication of ideas seems to me to have continuing
importance. I interpret this ideal to
mean that there is pressure for the voices of the voiceless (human and
non-human) to be heard. In this way, the universities have the possibility of
representing the thinking of the whole community and thus contributing to human
wisdom. It is unfortunate that the dominant trends in universities are towards
the technocratic cleverness required for advice to the managers of society
(sometimes explicitly "over against" the managed). I think it is time
that universities review their assumptions about the teaching (or non-teaching)
of values; the global society of the future has a right to expect more than
cleverness from the graduates of universities. What is the ethos that
universities should cultivate? How might such an ethos cultivate humanity and
wisdom as well as cleverness?
Part of the problem is that what belongs to everybody is
usually the responsibility of nobody. The notion that there is a global
community is still more of an ideal than an operational reality despite the
efforts of the United Nations and other international agencies. The Christian
ecumenical movement has always included this global focus through the literal
meaning of the word "oikumene" (the
inhabited world). Global communications
technology is constantly making this visionary focus more relevant to our daily
activities. The challenge is to discern the spiritual dimensions to this global
focus, which to me includes the work of making real our global community.
Gatherings and celebrations such as the WSCF has traditionally organized make a
direct contribution to the humanizing of this emerging global society. I think
this should be a focus for planning how the WSCF can contribute, along with
"other bodies of goodwill," to the humanizing of the future academic
community.
One further specific focus for the WSCF as an organization
should be upon the dialogue with other religious groups. All religious groups
are in danger of being marginalized, both in the academic community and in the
emerging global society, by the dynamics that I am describing.
Technocracy marginalizes spiritual and religious practices
through consigning them to the "private" sphere, along with the
family and virtually all forms of face-to-face community
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except the elite meetings of managers. While it
remains important to resist this marginalization through the provision of
opportunities for the public practice of religious worship and spiritual
celebration, thought also needs to go into the more subtle ways in which the
spiritual dimension is public. Work as a heart-felt vocation, beyond the sale
of a skill on the labour market, is one such focus; care for our world is
another. In the absence of such dimensions as these, the academic community
comes to define its role purely in terms of meeting the requirements of the
currently powerful.
Future academic community will need to safeguard its status
as community and its access to an adequate articulation of human values if the
more narrow and negative scenarios are to be avoided. This will not happen
without determined efforts by people and their organizations to articulate
ideals beyond economic development (important as that is) and to create spaces
where the voice of the voiceless can be heard. In the words of Deryck Schreuder, Australian
Humanity
cannot live by spreadsheets of financial advance alone, nor can societies rest
their character and capacity in a- narrow view of technological growth. In our
own extraordinary decade of the 1990s, we have viewed the collapse of a
superpower that could reach the moon but not meet the aspirations for
well-being and civil rights. The human prospect necessarily includes the human
quest for dignity and freedom.1
Dr. Sandy Yule
teaches at the