Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
This deeply felt and openly expressed examination of conscience
regarding the functions and functioning of expertise in a democratic
society may be the single most valuable contribution of HEX to thinking
about higher education.
And so HEX authors in their scholarship and practice signal a
willful retreat from what expertise and professionalism promised to
provide them as scholars. That is, a zone within which they “own”
their labor, can hone their competencies and can experience themselves
as creative human beings. HEX scholars present themselves as willing to
share in the name of democracy the very thing—the agency bestowed
by expert knowledge that comes with advanced education—that their
students are told will ensure them, their students, a work life of creativity
and autonomy. And it might be added, take a hatchet to expertise!
What compensates academics, scholars, and professionals for the
loss of status and agency that attends the sharing of the expertise, authority,
and intellectual privilege that supposedly accompanies a PhD?
The story I read in HEX is one of steady fleshing out of a new form of
work conducted outside the ivied walls and a celebration of the joys that
attend that work. Levine terms it civic work. It is also termed public work. 1
But when we think of public work in a democracy, we don’t
usually think “Public Plumber.” So why do we assume that there
is a Public Scholar, a Public Journalist, a Public Intellectual? This
is where the larger dialogue on the external pressures bearing upon
higher education comes into play.
Much has been written to date about the work lives of faculty.
Foundation-sponsored academic conferences, organizational meetings,
and sessions within annual disciplinary meetings have focused on the
impact of neoliberal market values on the institutional, disciplinary,
and global organizations and contexts within which faculty labor and
which constrain and shape the work they do. Books, articles, and
think pieces have emerged from those conferences, meetings, and
disciplinary sessions. 2
1 Boyte, “Public Work: An interview with Harry Boyte,” and Boyte, Everyday Politics:
Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life.
2 Brint, The Future of the City of Intellect: The Changing American University.
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