Apologies for any cross posting.
Members may be interested in this upcoming joint event hosted by the
Centre for Citizenship, Identity and Governance, Open Space and Centre for
Higher education, Research and Information at the Open University. If
interested please RSVP [log in to unmask]
Details below.
Regards, James Ash
Professor Craig Calhoun
15 March 2010, 14:00 followed by a reception
Berrill Lecture Theatre, The Open University, Walton Hall,
Free Inquiry and Public
A widespread model of the research university unites freedom of
intellectual inquiry (for both students and professors) with the creation of
new knowledge through research, the nurturance of a scholarly community
integrating disparate fields, open public communication, and the effort to make
knowledge widely available as a public good. In this talk I ask to what extent
this basic model is challenged by changes underway in research universities
today. The changes range from transformations of scale to shifts in financing,
growing interests in private rather than public goods, new inequalities, and
obsession with rankings. I will particularly urge thinking of free inquiry as a
social matter, a public good. It is not enough to ask whether individual
scholars are free from censorship or illegitimate attempts to control their
work. We should also ask how much the university as an institution contributes
to overall reedom of inquiry. This requires assessing how well universities
educate students to be participants in free inquiry, how well researchers
communicate their work to raise the quality of public discourse, and whether
the results of scientific inquiry are made freely available to advance further
inquiry or controlled as private property. It requires asking whether the specific
structures and practices through which we organize academic work – from disciplinary
departments to evaluation procedures to publication systems – do more to facilitate
or obstruct free inquiry.
For further information, please visit: www.open.ac.uk/ccig
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