Academic excellence and community relevance: Can we have it all?

Abstract

Academic excellence, in its original meaning (areté), combines intellectual and moral merit, grounded in one's relevance to and impact on one's world. However, in the current era of limited time and high-stake competition, social relevance is pre-assumed to trade-off against scientific distinction. This paper is one long argument against such excellence-relevance trade-off. We first briefly describe the history of academic 'excellence' and argue it does not support the current use of the term nor vindicate a necessary community-academia trade-off. Second, we review the current game theory framework for addressing community-academia interactions. We argue that due to its pre-assumed trade-off, it often entrenches an unjust hierarchy between science and society, even when motivated by honest goodwill and ending with reciprocal "win-win" benefits. Given these difficulties, in the third section we present a practical alternative, a case study of "Town Square Academia", which operates in peripheral and heterogenic communities. We review its success and failures in the attempt to combine excellence with relevance, and argue for expanding such attempts. To conclude, given the importance of bridging the gap between science and society, even if scientific excellence only sometimes manages to unite with social and environmental relevance, it should all ways be attempted before rolled out.