Introduction: Considering the Thinking University

Abstract

The university is a thinking institution. Surely, that does not need to be said but it does. In much of the contemporary world, in many kinds of nation, the university finds itself amid a climate of suspicion, a climate in which the very heart of the university, namely its interests in knowledge and thought, has been placed in the dock. In the contemporary climate, we are being told that we live in a world of ‘alternative facts’ and in a post-truth age. In such a world, the university ought to be an institution that has much to offer the world. After all, the university is an institution that is particularly associated with systematic efforts to understand the world. Surely, therefore, it contains resources that can address and even overcome these contemporary challenges. Unfortunately, matters here are far from plain sailing. Instead of residing in the relationship between the knower and the world, now it should be recast as a set of relationships between different kinds of knowers, especially between those in universities and the wider world. Just this is the tack taken in this volume, which constitutes a collective effort to position the university as a place of thought in the world. That is to say, the predominant interest of the scholars on duty here is that of ferreting out connections, both actual and possible, between the university and the wider world that lie precisely in its being understood especially as an institution of thought understood relationally; as a thinking university that, in particular, gains its spurs through its concerns with the world. And the general claim here is that in locating the university in this way, as an institution whose thought has much to offer the world, neglected potentials of the university can be discerned and realised.