University at the Intersection of the World and Home. Towards the Admiration of Independent Thinking

This essay discusses the important question concerning the understanding of university. The author uses anthropological and philosophical approaches to develop the interpretation of the local-worldly university. Why shall we think about university at the intersection of the world and home? The main aim of the article is to describe and interpret problems of autonomy, location, and connection with regions. The author refers to Plato, Aristotle, Herder, Humboldt, Dilthey, Nie-tzsche, Ortega y Gasset, Heidegger, Merton, Lyotard, Derrida, and Esposito. The explanation of the idea of wonder leads to the consideration of an important role of university as an independent and autonomous place in our common space. Thinking about university as an independent entity is an act of retreating from the conception of university as a centre of innovation, yielding unified and standardized thought, yet deprived of roots. University is not a realm of “the same.” If we take care of “the difference,” in particular, if we think about the Derridean term “différance”, we should affirm “the difference” in the daily practice of our universities. University is obliged to strengthen independent thinking and engaged practice, to encourage dealing with inconvenient themes and producing unprecedented narratives. We thus need to affirm our right to independence. Local orientation of university brings about the common creation of the space, which involves not only pride in one’s identity, but also a sense of the infinite, the impossible, the incomprehensible, and the strange. The local-worldly university leads us to recognition university at the intersection of the world and home.
 

Academic Fordlandia

Contemporary university is faced with radical shift in its basic paradigm. This shift is embedded in neoliberal discourse pervading all levels of social life. Discussion about university goals, sharpened by last reform, show peculiar tension between perceiving knowledge as commonwealth and as stock. This reform transform university into the position where division between public and privet, and between knowledge as commonwealth and as stock increasingly sliding. Importing thing is this conflict is always presented in its surrogate, such as „young” and „old” antagonism or more general opposition between „modern free market” and „state backwardness”. The aim of this text is to look at changing model of contemporary university from critical anthropology point of view. This allow us to show basic principles of common-private conflict at university, but also capacity of critical orientated anthropological approach for understand consequences of where this social process led to.
 

(University) cities:  imagined?

This paper explores the phenomenon of university town in Poland and Europe. More specifically, the paper illustrates cultural base of conflicts and debates connected with cooperation between city and university, and methods of it researching and solving. It is argued that there is a significant difference between visions of the university produced by humanities and sciences. In recent years, this difference has also emerged in several universities which locate campuses and student communities outside the city. Such a process is a result of the geographical, economic, social and cultural promotion of higher education in the end of 20th century. Enlarged student populations should be integrated into communities characterized by much the same styles of life, modes of consumption, inherited cultural capital and “good taste”. Students are dispersed to different parts of towns and cities. Process of studentification generate gentrification in the middle of the city, but it has also a positive impact on city dwellers and local communities. In many ways, these young communities signified lucid exemplars that the city-university relations seek to engender. The paper concludes by considering some possible issues of cooperation characteristic to the university town.
 

Social movements for science and higher education. Polish grassroots activities of the last decade

The article is dedicated to analysis of activities of Polish social movements for science and higher education during the last decade. It is focused on their ideological bases, scope of interests and connections with the wider social environment – i.e. other social ideas and social and/or political actors, that somehow shaped and influenced patterns of goals and activities of the acade-
mia activists. Here, a particular attention is paid to the mechanisms of changes in the higher education field. Finally, the attempt will be made to show the (prospective) role and impact of these social movements on the process of reforms of the higher education in Poland.
 

University as a company? Critical discourse analysis concerning discussion on higher education reform in Poland (2008-2013).

This paper is an analysis of professional academic discussion on reform of higher education, which was implemented in 2011. It describes how the crisis of the Polish academia was defined and what solutions were proposed. It is also an attempt to show how ministry of science tried to delegitimize academic’s right to self-diagnosis and discussion. I claim, that reform was a fulfillment of New Public Management paradigm, that results in two phenomenon. Firstly, reform was attractive for young scholars and gave them promise of emancipation. Secondly, solutions of the reform are derived from general position of Polish economics as global periphery.
 

The wolf can never be satiated. Entrepreneurialuniversities, commercialisation of research and university-business cooperation

The article is a critique of the entrepreneurial university model. Its first thesis states the academia cannot be regarded as an element of the industry supply chain. The second thesis deals with an issue of double funding: the very process of commercialisation of research is based on funding of private and thus commercial enterprises with public resources. Unlike many writings
on this subject, it’s not the article’s aim to defend an academic knowledge community in its traditional mode. Drawing on selected private-public partnership models, the authors reveal the history of entrepreneurial university concept: its legal and political origin, as well as basic presumptions. In the following analysis they describe and test its utility on its own terms.
 

The imported imponderabilia

Academic community has always been concerned with scientific research and educational effectiveness. Since the Middle Ages a proper functioning of university has been determined by adequate and firm infrastructural, legal and financial support guaranteeing its stability in face of political, social and educational problems. With an emergence of university as a cultural institution of high importance to the European social life, some typical problems appeared, e.g. staff under-
investment in academic units and centres, recurring decline in educational level, impoverishment and insecure prestige of scientists, changeable demand for university courses, more or less oppressive censorship, etc. Last years have brought red tape overgrowth and overwhelming procedures that operate within formal indicators which determine what is and what is not to be regarded as scientific, what kind of research is to be supported and continued and what does and does not become ethic for an academic. The following tendency can be observed in the area of financial distribution, in the favoured ways of conducting scientific studies and in corporative rules of work organization. It is also visible in the choice of areas within the sphere of particular groups (e.g. national, European, local or social). University people try to comply with the demands, which, in turn, results in limiting the space for creative individual actions, so indispensable in academic work. The “return to Europe” syndrome in the countries lacking everyday contact with the world recognised academic centres, has revealed itself in fascination with methodological and interpretative news. It is problematic that chasing the lost time has become a constant imperative visible in following intellectual fashions, even if new trends are of purely figurative function. The imported imponderabilia have become an essential host for Polish humanities to sponge off. The remaining question is whether there exists an alternative solution for the introduction of our original impact into the international academic world. [przeł. Justyna Pacukiewicz]
 

Recenzja:

Izolda Topp, Słowa niemodne? Kultura – Symbol – Tradycja, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław 2014, ss. 290

Recenzja:

Kulturowe studia miejskie. Wprowadzenie, E. Rewers (red.), Narodowe Centrum Kultury, Warszawa 2014.

Recenzja:

Gregorgy Scholette, Dark Matter; Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture