Discourses of crisis and academia: debating impacts on practices, values and identities

Abstract

The University as an idea, as a project, is being transformed. What are its specificities in the present days? Do universities still have a public task? What are the appropriate functions of higher education? What are the purposes of teaching and research? What counts as relevant knowledge and what counts as an appropriate higher education? Is the age of Universities (late 11th c. — early 21st c.) in the West getting to a close? Whose discourses are achieving dominance? Meanings related to the identity, principles and practices of the university have been reworked in profound and contradictory ways, generating tensions and disputes within the university and in its relations with the state and society. How are we dealing with these challenges that are at once obstructive, destructive and creating new opportunities? We need to make a pause, to look in the mirror. After all, we are “responding” in whatever we do.