This essay examines several ethical and epistemological issues that arise when philosophers conduct empirical research focused on, or in collaboration with, community groups seeking to bring about systemic change. This type of research can yield important policy lessons about effective community-driven reform and how to incorporate the voices of…

What is it to be a university? In what does the being of the university reside in the 21st century? To draw on a Heideggerian expression, what is its "being possible"? To address such questions seriously, we are drawn to imagine the university as it might unfold and so sketch out feasible utopias for it. But such a project of the…

In this paper I ask whether the University has a special role to play in democratic societies. I argue that the modern University can no longer lay claim to a research monopoly since nowadays research is conducted in many places outside of the University. The University can, however, still lay claim to a kind of knowledge monopoly which has to…

The principle of reason "as principle of grounding, foundation or institution" has tended to guide the science of research toward techno-practical ends. From this epistemic superintendence of the terms of knowledge and inquiry, there has arisen the traditional notion of academic responsibility that is tied to the pursuit of truth via a conception…

Many UK universities now recognise that artistic practice can constitute a form of research in its own right; increasingly, practising artists are sponsored or employed to work creatively within the academy, whilst the regulatory frameworks of research degree programmes have evolved to enable practical doctoral submissions. These developments have…

In a discussion of the role and tradition of the university, it is suggested that we guard against simply institutionalizing the existing system of privilege, that the university's role is the cultivation of inquiring minds rather than professional socialization or advancement of faculty, that true collegiality is necessary in governance. (MSE)

The significance of the foundations of education approach to teaching is apparent in the ideas of John Henry Newman, Karl Jaspers, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Mortimer Adler. Newman maintained that there is a circle of knowledge and once this unity is ignored the result is distortion in the learners and in the knowledge. To retain the whole, the…