Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
and constructive problem-solving … values [that] have deep roots
in American political history.”
Knowing that Levine could not provide a comprehensive picture
of the higher education landscape, at least not in one opening
chapter, we asked Mary Stanley, an independent scholar, formerly
at Syracuse University, to weigh in with her view, knowing that it
was likely to be very different from Levine’s. He himself pointed
out in a HEX 2004 interview that “the culture of American universities
is not uniform, rather it is passionately contested.” That is
certainly true in the chapter that he and Stanley share.
As Stanley sees it, Levine and others have boarded “the democracy
train,” while ignoring the market-driven “neoliberal train that
seems to be gathering the whole of humanity, forcing its passengers
to rush ever faster to a temporal and spatial world that just might
destroy our capacity for community.” For Stanley, globalization
spares no one, including those who labor in academia, from the
consequences of unbridled capitalism.
She argues that too many in higher education are too much the
unwitting allies of globalization when they retreat into civil society.
She fears that “the larger political economy becomes the weather;
out there, not of us. Or the ‘thing’ gentleman and ladies don’t discuss.”
For Stanley, Kettering and her HEX colleagues are obviously
part of that polite company.
She thinks that higher education institutions must do more
than just acknowledge those who share her dissenting view. They
should, given Levine’s stress on open-endedness, make room for
the consideration of macro changes to deal with “the conundrums,
contradictions and tensions globalization brings to all institutional
sectors, including their own.” Although Stanley is far from satisfied,
she does not totally despair. For her, the “world-spanning, neoliberal
political economy so vast and seemingly uncontrollable, is a
human creation, was once otherwise and could be different.”
Chapter Two—The Civic Roots of Higher Education
We asked Claire Snyder, associate professor of political theory
and director of academics for the higher education program at
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