Universities, Democratic Culture & Human Rights
I spent last Thursday and Friday at an international meeting at the University of Pennsylvania, hosted by Ira Harkavy and his collegues: the Symposium on Universities, Democratic Culture & Human Rights: An Action Agenda. More than 60 academics, administrators, and a few students from 14 countries met to discuss how to follow up on the Strasbourg meeting of last June 23 which led to the formulation of the Declaration on The Responsibility of Higher Education for a Democratic Culture, Citizenship, Human Rights, and Sustainability. The Declaration is available from the home page of the Network for Higher Education and Democratic Culture.
The Declaration is a stirring and important document, but the challenge is to figure out what to do next. One realization was that the Declaration itself should be translated into a variety of languages. In thinking about doing this, one realizes that some of the key terms—democracy, civil society, etc.—have quite different meanings in different languages and societies. Successfully accomplishing this would be a significant step toward an international understanding of the civic aims of higher education.
Beyond this, there are interesting differences among academics in different countries about what their roles should be, based on different national and academic cultures. To oversimplify, the Europeans tend to focus on the theory and meaning of democracy and human rights, while the Americans focus on practical community engagement through things such as service-learning but—for the most part—don't think very deeply about the nature and current (difficult) state of democracy. Further learning from each other about these various approaches should raise the level of the whole enterprise.
The real challenge is to build these issues into our teaching and scholarship, which will require rethinking of many things we now take for granted in higher education. We're most likely to succeed in this if we take care to involve our students going forward.
Postscript: By coincidence, I was catching up with some old New Yorkers, and came across an essay in the January 8, 2007 issue by Milan Kundera entitled "Die Weltliteratur: How we read one another". Kundera writes "All the nations of Europe are living out a common destiny, but each is living it out differently, based on its own distinct experience." He formulates his "own ideal of Europe thus: maximum diversity in minimum space." The ideas Kundera explores help to explain some of the differences in approach and emphasis between European and American participants in the meeting.