Constructing universities for democracy

• Published in: Studies in Philosophy and Education
• Main Author: Kristinsson, Sigurður
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: ameliorative analysis; democracy; Haslanger; higher education; social construction; the idea of a university; University; value theory; Ásta; Háskólar; Lýðræði; Education; Philosophy; Akureyri; University of Akureyri
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/3698; https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-022-09853-5

Funding Information: This research was part of the project Universities and Democracy: A Critical Analysis of the Civic Role and Function of Universities in a Democracy, funded by the Icelandic Centre for Research (Rannís grant #184684). It was also made possible by a sabbatical leave granted by the University of Akureyri. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s). Universities can sharpen their commitment to democracy through institutional change. This might be resisted by a traditional understanding of universities. The question arises whether universities have defining purposes that demarcate possible university policy, strategic planning, and priority setting. These are significant questions because while universities are among our most stable long-term institutions, there is little consensus on what they are, what they are for, and what makes them valuable. This paper argues that universities can in fact be organized around a wide variety of purposes without thereby becoming any less real as universities. Normative discourse around universities should therefore be unafraid to consider novel ideas that test the limits of our current university concept and our entrenched practices. The argument applies fresh insights from feminist philosophy. Haslanger’s (Haslanger, S. 2000. Gender and race: (What) are they? (What) do we want them to be? Noûs 34(1), 31-55, Haslanger, S. 2005. What are we talking about? The semantics and politics of social kinds. Hypatia 20(4): 10-26, Haslanger, S. 2012. Resisting reality: Social construction and social critique. Oxford University Press.) ameliorative account of gender and race provides a model for how to frame novel and critical ideas about universities. Ásta’s (Ásta. 2018. Categories we live by: The construction of sex, gender, race, and other social categories. New York: Oxford University Press.) conferralist framework explains how universities are socially constructed and where our university concept, social behavior, and normative discourse fits into that construction. ...