Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

A Portrait of a University
self-evident, it is incumbent upon scholars to revisit the duties of
educational institutions and educators to the democratic practices
that enable unfettered discovery.
Postscript
Randall Jarrell, a mid-20th century American author, wrote,
“It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with
you for the rest of your life.” I fear that phrases like public scholarship,
service learning, and others are cases in point. They have institutionalized
themselves in our academic homes and not without
cost. Public scholarship may provide a useful heuristic—but the
real issue is not about convenient phrases to dissect. We the People as
a political body and the People’s loss—our forfeiture—of democratic
sovereignty are the issues at stake. Education, through teaching,
discovery, the conservation of the arts and sciences, and through
the diffusion of knowledge, carries obligations to the next generation
largely unmet by our institutions of higher education. Universities
can provide public commons in which the knowledge domains, the
practices, and the skills of democratic sovereignty are taught and
disseminated as a coherent whole. To do so will require a reimagining
of our roles in which learning democratic capacity will be as
important as the domains of knowledge that support it. Discovery,
the conservation of the arts and sciences, the diffusion of knowledge,
and their placement in a meaningful and socially responsible context
are the substance of democratic capacity. The affirmative constitutional
obligation of professional educators is to ensure that that
capacity does not run dry.
169