Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

A Portrait of a University
meetings like this one between what I hear around the
table and what I know the dominant university culture
is asking: where’s the beef in validated research
results? That is, if I want to reward my faculty for doing
“public scholarship,” can
you show me that these efforts
result in useable new “We don’t have a
knowledge that passes movement yet, but perhaps
even better, we do
muster with standard academic
journals and publishers
and academic review? have the makings of
If not, I have to judge this
a sustainable scholarly
a well-meaning distraction
from what the university community interested in
should be up to.
what it means to prepare
I think there is or can be an students and communities
for enlightened
answer to these questions—
that is, I think, especially for
the social sciences, but not democracy.”
only the social sciences, the
(“Public Scholarship at
answer is that sometimes
Penn State: An interview
public scholarship can absolutely
improve scholar-
HEX, 2005.)
with Jeremy Cohen,”
ship at large. But this is
more an article of faith than
a demonstrated achievement, I think. Well, we’ll see.
At least for Professor Demos and for many colleagues in November
2004, public scholarship, civic engagement, and service learning
were interchangeable terms. The priority for Professor Demos was
neither university service (an important element of the land-grant
and outreach models) nor helping the next generation to understand
and to learn and adopt the practices necessary to sustain
democratic sovereignty. The charge, Demos said, was to “locate the
beef,” the university’s sustenance. Knowledge in this paradigm
requires a test—in the era of No Child Left Behind and expanding
federal and state intrusion to curriculum, “a tangible demonstration
of outcomes.” Professor Demos’ suggestion—gauging the success of
public scholarship as, will the efforts “result in useable new knowledge
that passes muster with standard academic journals and publishers and
159