In this the third of my most recent blogs on the theme of a University for the Common Good – I reflect on the decline of our current model of the University and how the concept of “hospicing a habit of being” coined by Stein et al(2020) might enable those of us who have argued for transformative change in our universities for some considerable time -to continue to question the status quo and survive the discomfort and pain and the losses directly emanating from the multiplicity of crises-and yet find ways to open new ways of knowing and being in what are tumultuous times.
Ray Ison at the Open University and others in the systems in practice discourse argue for further innovation in our collective ways of knowing and doing because our social world is increasingly becoming severely constrained by:
- explanations we are asked to accept that are no longer relevant to our circumstances;
- outdated historical institutions (in the institutional economic sense)that contribute as social technologies to a broader human created and ungoverned technosphere;
- inadequate theory-informed practices, or praxis;
- governance systems no longer adequate for purpose.
Humans are adept at inventing words to describe how we conceive of phenomenon in the world like ecosystems or biosphere-the latter being the worldwide sum of all ecosystems . These so-called neologisms through their reification and use as “things in the world” frame the ways we engage with the world because Ison proposes that language acts like a mediating social technology. So, if we are attempting to innovate to change our relationship within and to the world our framing choices become increasingly important.
Over recent decades there have been many different initiatives aimed at responding to the changing world in which we all live. Many of these fall under the broad frame of the ”green university” or “sustainable university”-“movement”. Most of which might be framed as “soft” reforms”. Yet these movements remain strangely silent on how the curriculum and research programmes emanating from these programmes have been co-opted by corporate interests , let alone the role of universities in aiding and abetting the fossil fuel industries. And there is little or no acknowledgement of how the university’s sustainability strategies gloss over the awkward fact that universities are integral to a system directly reliant upon the unsustainable goal of mass consumption and endless growth.
Hence, some of those who seek to repurpose the university have begun to frame the debate based on some new neologisms like the “regenerative university” and the reorientation of universities towards a” regenerative and relational educational paradigm.”
As Ison(2017) reflects -the example of the contemporary university exemplifies how ways of knowing and acting undermine attempts to govern more effectively in an Anthropocentric world. He argues- as do I that the current organisation of the university with all its constituent parts( e.g.-disciplines;projects;research institutes.) is poorly equipped to foster the ways of thinking and acting needed to respond to the existential crises. Systemic failings in these “hospicing” institutions include perpetuations of disciplinary silos; inadequate fostering of interdisciplinary and trans disciplinary approaches to research and teaching; inadequate problematising and opportunity framing ;unacknowledged epistemological tyranny -a form of epistemological injustice in the refereeing of research publications, evaluations and promotional practices and an over adherence to linear first order traditions of knowledge production and its dissemination in teaching and research.
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