The Missed Fork in the “Forked-Road Situation”

Abstract

in his 2022 coss dialogue lecture, “Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic, Civic University,” Ira Harkavy presents us with a challenge. It is a timely challenge. For most of us, life is beginning to be recognizable again after a period of profound disruption in every aspect of our lives. For many of us, this meeting of the Society of the Advancement for American Philosophy is our first in-person conference in two years. For those of us who teach, we may just be returning to the classroom after teaching virtually or, like me, some are just beginning to see the faces of our students as mask mandates are being lifted. No one is under the impression that the threat of COVID-19 has passed or that the pandemic is over, but things are starting to look more familiar. In many ways, it is a tremendous and welcome relief. And yet, as I read Harkavy's paper, I cringe at my own comfort in returning to something like “normal.” Particularly with respect to our institutions of higher education, Harkavy has argued, “there should be no return to normal” (Harkavy 51).Harkavy is certainly right. The pandemic threw this reality into stark relief, but it was true before the arrival of COVID-19. In the midst of so many crises of the twenty-first century, it is long past time to re-evaluate the role of the college and the university and adjust to meet the needs of the current context.Harkavy suggests envisioning a new role for colleges and universities—the democratic civic university. Universities aren't currently doing what they are supposed to do, he argues; we are more a part of the problem than the solution, and thus, we must rethink our mission and then implement changes geared toward creating knowledge for social change. Advancing democracy should be the primary mission of higher education, and to do that, we need a new epistemology to guide our efforts. This epistemology will be less top-down, action-oriented, reflective and iterative, and relational. Harkavy is in good company here. Feminist-pragmatists such as Grace Lee Boggs, Barbara Thayer-Bacon, Judy Whipps, and Danielle Lake have argued along these same lines.1 Drawing in this paper on Dewey's calls to action and reflecting on the way his own university has worked toward this vision over several decades, Harkavy calls on us to collectively re-imagine higher education that can respond to the threats it faces and the threats that face democracy.I find Harkavy's ideas and the legacy he is building through his work at the Barbara and Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships to be incredibly compelling. My comments to Harkavy will address a few places of concern and possibility that his paper raised for me.“[C]reating and sustaining an inclusive, just democratic society requires a radical, indeed revolutionary, change in higher education,” Harkavy writes. “To return to a pre-pandemic status quo is not an option” (Harkavy 51). Indeed, a radical, revolutionary change in higher education is necessary. But I believe Harkavy may be overconfident in his claim that a return to a pre-pandemic status quo is not an option. In fact, I think, it is the most likely one. It is the route, I believe, that we've already chosen.We are not at the “forked-road” situation, to use Dewey's words (qtd. in Harkavy 49), but well past it—already having missed a critical turn. A return to a pre-pandemic status quo is already the direction we are headed—and it is a dangerous one. To continue on this path will make for a bitter journey heading nowhere. But we can turn around and forge a new path, and Harkavy offers encouraging possibilities and challenges for doing so. We must not be distracted by an optimism that the necessary radical change will happen. But we can and should press for it.At the root of higher education's predicament is an identity problem. Harkavy suggests that higher education is failing to be the thing it is for. It has an “unrealized democratic public purpose,” he explains, offering evidence from the University of Pennsylvania's founding documents. Benjamin Franklin, in 1749, described Penn's goal: to develop in students the inclination needed to serve others—“One's Country, Friends, and Family”—and the ability to do so. The ability to do so, he argued, would be “the aim and end of all learning” (Franklin qtd. in Harkavy 58). This is where our current models of education have fallen short. We have failed to foster that democratic spirit as the primary aim of our efforts. We have forgotten or failed to become what we are.Ahmed Afzaal, another scholar who shares Harkavy's concern about the return to “normal,” presents us with an ultimatum: “We can either initiate the necessary transformation now, or we can wait until we are compelled by the brute force of circumstances to make those same changes” (Afzaal 25). Both possibilities are bound to be painful. But we are already intensely feeling the pain of institutional erosion and resistance to change. Our institutions face serious hardships—ongoing budget cuts, dwindling enrollments, and students needing more attention than ever before, with fewer people to tend to their needs. In response, administrators produce old ideas with new names and call it growth. Few initiatives seem to revitalize learning in the ways that would actually matter. Everyone is left unsatisfied. What Afzaal suggests to guide our efforts—in alignment with Harkavy—is an urgently needed “return to purpose” (Afzaal 26).Afzaal argues that the problem is in institutional identity. We see ourselves as teaching institutions rather than learning organizations. He writes: “The college, as an institution, is designed for teaching, but the global predicament humanity is facing demands that the college becomes adept at learning” (Afzaal 25). The needed transformation is a move from teaching to learning as the primary feature of our institutional identity. We need to “evolve into a ‘learning organization,’ an institution that is able and willing to change its behavior in response to the changing environment so that it can continue serving its purpose” (Afzaal 25).This is, essentially, what I think Harkavy is working toward in his section called “A New Kind of University Requires a New Epistemology” (Harkavy 54). Harkavy invites us to adopt an “action-based” epistemology that resists the seemingly objective, technical rationality of the traditional research university. This new epistemology “makes room” for the practitioner to reflect in and on knowledge, to make and enact plans, and to develop “inclusive, democratic partnerships” with community members to create knowledge together—knowledge aimed explicitly at the creation of social change (Harkavy 53). A guiding epistemology of this sort could aid in the transformation from a teaching institution to a learning organization.But can colleges and universities become learners more than teachers? I suspect that the barriers are tremendous—perhaps even insurmountable, if there's any expectation of recognizing our institutions post-transformation. Faculty members can become better learners than teachers. In fact, when we are our best academic selves, I think we already are. We see ourselves as co-inquirers with our students. Part of our individual identity is that of lifelong learner. But I'm not confident the same can be said for institutions. And this is where we face the most significant challenges in our effort to transform institutions into ones poised to respond effectively and meaningfully to the interrelated twenty-first-century crises—the wicked problems of our day—such as the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing conflict and resulting migration, and global climate change (Lake et al. 3).Our institutions have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The economic realities they face are such that there is little room for real experimentation and authentic response to crises. It may be that we want to see ourselves as learning institutions in communities of inquiry extending beyond our campus, but to really be that entails risks that our institutions are reticent to take on. “The modern college,” Afzaal writes, is a highly conservative institution, and the ascendance of neoliberalism since the 1980s has only strengthened that characteristic. Change is difficult for any organization, but it is especially tricky for the college that takes pride in its long-standing traditions and depends heavily on the support of its alumni. . . . Furthermore, the conservative nature of the college tends to intensify during crises, making it even more risk-avoidant at a time when organizational flexibility is most needed. (Afzaal 26)Our institutions are leaders in many important ways, but it does not appear that we are poised to be leaders in the ways that matter most right now, because doing so would require recognizing and addressing the disconnect between the professed mission of the institution and the ways in which we participate in systems and practices absolutely counter to our mission. Harkavy made this claim pointedly. There is a profound tension between being learners in community and the demands of our students and their families, future employers, and boards of trustees for outcomes and certifications as the ultimate aim and end of education—quantifiable measures of success. The client/customer model that seems to be the trend in higher education does not lend itself well to the collaborative vision of a community of inquiry. At the same time, it appears that universities are losing trust in their teachers. We see increasing rigidity in syllabi criteria, stronger outcome-based requirements, and tenure expectations that diminish the importance of teaching or evaluate teaching based on misleading and problematic metrics. The fork in the road is getting further out of view.If we look ahead clear-eyed at our twenty-first-century crises, we can see that higher education will not be spared from the possibility of collapse. Looking at predictions of “planetary breakdown and civilizational collapse . . . we can appreciate that the current difficulties of higher education are merely a foretaste of what some scientists are calling humanity's ‘ghastly future’” (Afzaal 24).But a commitment to meliorism will remind us that all is not lost. Like Dewey, Harkavy believes the starting point for addressing this problematic, indeterminate situation is in the curriculum. He proposes that faculty do three things: “focus on place-based local partnerships, develop an inclusive approach involving a ‘community of experts,’ and make democratic implementation the process and goal of research” (Harkavy 55). These are commendable curricular aims. But they will require a great deal of analysis to be transformative in the ways this moment demands.I worry that many efforts at community partnerships fail to involve or cultivate meaningful, reciprocal relationships with mutually beneficial outcomes for all parties. Rather, what we frequently see in the context of partnerships are institutional efforts to maintain the status quo while getting credit for engaging in their purported mission. Or, worse, we sometimes see instances of exploitation of resources of community members. Without relationship being foremost, we may only have moved from land-grabbing to intelligence-grabbing.Thankfully, there are rich resources in feminist-pragmatism for guiding collaboration in place-based, local partnerships. Harkavy notes the influence of Jane Addams and the women of Hull House on Dewey's community school efforts. He writes: “The practical activities of the women of Hull House, and the powerful theories and insights these passionate activists derived from their work, helped Dewey to understand the central role that local communities played in American society and also to see that public schools could function as strategic agencies to help develop participatory democratic communities” (Harkavy 65).I am grateful for the inclusion of Addams here and for Harkavy's recognition of her influence on Dewey, which is, by some scholars, reductively noted the other way around. But I invite Harkavy to spend more time with the feminist-pragmatists, considering how the theories and insights of Addams and others might more specifically and intentionally guide the establishment and implementation of partnerships between institutions of higher education and community groups.2In hopes of tapping into more transformative potential within Harkavy's vision for relationships between community partners and universities, I'll briefly share my understanding of what a feminist-pragmatist approach to collaboration and partnership can offer. The framing I suggest for a feminist-pragmatist approach is an invitation to contestation. This is in contrast to any invitation to partnership extended on the terms of the dominant party. In most cases, the university is the dominant party, inviting others to join them in their scholarly activities by offering their resources, fitting the context of their curricular needs, working within the constraints of the academic calendar, and so on. While some of these constraints may be benign and understandable, there is often a resulting imbalance of power that makes true partnership questionable at best. The university may have an affiliation with an organization or community group, but it may not yet be a meaningful partnership, even if both parties benefit or exhibit willingness to work together. To that end, as we work to establish partnerships, “we must be more critically aware of how power operates, as well as more willing to collaboratively define the problem, ask the questions, and frame the options” (Lake et al. 5).Harkavy sees the local, geographic community as the starting point for partnership (Harkavy 55). I would not question that our institutions and other members of the local community have problems and issues of mutual concern that can serve as the starting point for collective action. But a necessary challenge to grapple with, however, is that sometimes the institution itself is the problem. Especially when it comes to marginalized populations in the community, we must figure out how to have meaningful, inclusive relationships with people whom the institution has explicitly and implicitly shut out. It is hard to imagine a meaningful partnership when one of the parties—the college, for example—has been hostile or unwelcoming to the other, or has stolen land from the other, or any number of other harms for which institutions are often asked to answer.Social systems scientist, futurist, and educational scholar Riane Eisler's distinction between domination systems and partnership systems can help illuminate the tensions that institutions of higher learning may face when striving to create democratic engagements within their communities. Social relations can be viewed through the lens of a partnership/domination continuum. All kinds of relations, from those among nation-states to those within families, can be understood to fall onto this continuum. Institutions of higher education often resemble domination systems more than partnership systems. They are characterized by top-down rankings, rigid control, androcentric preference, culturally accepted abuse and violence, and stories that present these kinds of relations as normal, desirable, and even moral (Eisler, “Power of the Creative Word” 36). Thankfully, the continuum notion suggests that we can move along the continuum. Eisler offers resources for cultivating “partnership intelligence” and for growing in “skill and capacity for partnership” (“Power of the Creative Word” 44). In contrast to “dominator intelligence,” partnership intelligence prioritizes and develops the ability to “fulfill needs with others rather than at their expense” (Eisler, “Power of the Creative Word” 44). Eisler explains that where “domination systems are ultimately held together by fear, force, and the threat of pain, partnership systems are based on mutuality; there are hierarchies, but rather than hierarchies of domination, these are hierarchies of actualization where power is empowering rather than disempowering and accountability, respect, and benefits flow both ways, rather than just from the bottom up” (Eisler qtd. in Gingerich).Harkavy insists that collaboration and common efforts in university-community partnerships must be mutually beneficial. And his call for a “democratic implementation revolution, which requires breaking down idealist categories that separate theory and application, scholars and practitioners, and academics and community members” (Harkavy 54). But how to do so is a persistent challenge, and one I believe we have failed to undertake with the necessary intentionality, humility, and openness.As we endeavor to find ways of moving forward together, there is an urgent need for avowal of historical and contemporary wrongs and complicity to the problematic situation. The institution cannot put protecting itself or its reputation above the relationship it wishes to establish and nurture. Sympathetic understanding is critical for moving forward in this kind of work, acknowledging harms, disparities, and power imbalances and working to rectify them.3 And we should not assume that reconciliation can take place without disruption and discomfort.Addams's understanding of and embodiment of sympathetic understanding in her work navigating issues and conflicts in various contexts—from her time in Chicago's Hull House working to improve the conditions of the industrial immigrant neighborhood, to the negotiation tables with the Labor Movement and the Pullman Strike, to her advocacy for international cooperation to address world hunger—are exemplary. She maintained that sympathetic understanding is “the only way of approach to any human problem” (Addams 11). Sympathetic understanding may help us arrive at a conclusion for what course of action to take in a given context, but perhaps just as importantly, it helps us shape a different future together; it allows us to work together to make meaning and shape collective identity. This is what our institutions need at this moment. It will require liminal spaces where sympathetic understanding can be nurtured and fostered, where it can flow in both directions between parties where the relationship has been damaged or severed, or where the relationship is not yet developed. Sympathetic understanding requires proximity and openness to hear and grasp the perplexities of the various positions involved.Another hallmark of feminist-pragmatism important in the context of partnership is cooperative intelligence. Developing out of the social ethics of Addams and Dewey is the insistence that amelioration requires working together with the stakeholders involved in a given situation, rather than doing things for or to those involved in the untenable situation. This insistence rests on the belief that each individual, no matter their station, has valuable knowledge to contribute to collective understanding. A feminist-pragmatist method of inquiry takes sympathetic understanding to be a critical part of ethical responsibility, but it also demands epistemic responsibility through cooperative intelligence. In explicating his new epistemology, Harkavy makes clear that things like indigenous place-based knowledge are to be valued and incorporated into the research paradigm, but a feminist-pragmatist approach can help to center that knowledge and address the power disparity that has typically shut it out.A third feature is ecological thinking, which involves an expansive kind of engagement that places ecology—the interrelationships between humans and their environments—at the center of inquiry, revealing interconnectedness and interdependence and insisting that the place itself must not be abstracted from the search for understanding. Ecological thinking “relocates inquiry ‘down on the ground’ where knowledge is made, negotiated, circulated: and where the nature and conditions of the particular ‘ground,’ the circumstances of specific knowers, their interdependence and their negotiations, have claims to critical epistemic scrutiny equivalent to those of allegedly isolated, discrete propositional knowledge claims” (Code 5–6).When collective intelligence has been pooled, and the situation is more fully illuminated through ecological thinking, wiser and more ethically responsible deliberation and more meaningful partnerships can occur. For the feminist-pragmatist, the aim of partnership is finding a path forward. The establishment of a partnership does not purport to resolve every conflict, nor does it envision some perfect outcome; to have such an aim would minimize the significance of the stakeholders’ vested interests and the perplexity of the situation. But it does suggest that efforts that involve sympathetic understanding and cooperative intelligence can have meliorative power even in the face of serious and intractable differences: “Differences do not have to be eradicated to achieve a shared solidarity of interests, beliefs, and political action” (Seigfried 276). The actions or ways forward that may be discovered are modest. Consensus is an ideal, but it is not utopian: “It is temporary, revisable, strategic, and directed at specific ends-in-view” (Seigfried 275).For the feminist-pragmatist, contestation should be invited, not avoided. Working through a given problem well requires including more voices, investigating with more and more nuance, and wrestling with possibility and perplexity. It is always ongoing—never fixed and final. But it opens up creative space for meaningful engagements with potential for transformation—the kinds of transformation I think Harkavy envisions.An invitation to contestation is risky. It requires humility and a willingness to listen. In the context of institutions of higher learning, it may require public acknowledgment of wrongdoing and shortcomings—things our change-and-risk-averse institutions are reticent to do. The results of partnerships that involve contestation—that actually invite it—are uncertain. But certainty is what protects the status quo, and that is precisely what we need to work to disrupt in this moment. The invitation to contestation, which would be characteristic of a meaningful, mutual partnership, is a challenge. We must recognize that playing it safe won't keep us safe either. No matter what, our institutions are going to have to change; whether we are in for a bitter, disheartening fight or not is at least in part up to us. Grace Lee Boggs asks profoundly: What if we were to accept contestation “as a challenge rather than a threat?” (Boggs and Kurashige 31). Doing so will require those of us in institutions of higher learning to enter discursive spaces with our partners differently. As we analyze our supposed epistemological advantage, Mariana Alessandri invites us to enter these spaces “unarmed, jettisoning certainty” (Alessandri 98). But institutional security need not come only in the form of power, economic status, or even stability. Perhaps security can come from relationships and from “horizontal teaching and learning,” validated by community growth and transformation (Boggs and Kurashige 155). That kind of security is better suited to respond to twenty-first-century crises that we are encountering and are sure to continue to encounter—a security deriving from the institution's elasticity rather than its rigidity.Our institutions of higher learning need to face the realities of the moment, and we need to do so face-to-face in their local neighborly community, to invoke Dewey's words and Harkavy's vision. I thank Dr. Harkavy for the challenge he offers. We must not return to normal. With Harkavy, Dewey, and the feminist-pragmatists I have leaned on, I hope we can resist the urge to return and resist the tendency to find relief and a sense of safety in the familiar; instead, I hope we can take the risks necessary to engage meaningfully in our communities and to learn from one another, all in the service of our democratic public purpose.