ira harkavy has given us much to consider. His paper, “Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic University,” invites us to critically assess our democracy and the role of colleges and universities in the propagation of our democratic way of life. Harkavy suggests that universities are failing to fulfill their function, that is, “to educate students to be ethical, empathetic, engaged, democratic citizens, and advance knowledge for the continuous betterment of the human condition” (50). He suggests that universities are central societal institutions in the world, and research universities are most central—“they develop new ideas and technologies, incubate businesses, serve as cultural and artistic centers, and are engines of local, national, and global economics” (50). Our universities produce our teachers and our teachers’ teachers; they shape the learning, values, and the aspirations of students (Harkavy 50). But, again, universities are not fulfilling their social function of “creating and sustaining an inclusive, just democratic society” (Harkavy 51). Harkavy boldly asserts that a revolutionary change is required in higher education if it is to fulfill its democratic function.I have a concern about the role of Research 1 (R1) universities in this picture. I am led to believe that R1 universities, like the University of Pennsylvania, exist in rarefied air. Penn, for example, has a ridiculous endowment—more than $20 billion. Penn apparently accepts only 9% of its applicants. The resources and demographics of R1 institutions are unlike those at state schools and small liberal arts colleges. The various canons, the faculty, and the student body at elite R1 universities have historically represented the thoughts, experiences, and perplexities of well-heeled white heteronormative men. The vast majority of the faculty and students at R1 universities are predominantly of Anglo-European descent and a higher socioeconomic status. This gives me pause. If R1 universities are placed as the central engines of democratic fomenting, I worry that the faculty and students at R1 universities will direct research and social amelioration projects in particular directions and retain particular presuppositions that will buttress the continued flourishing of elite R1 universities. A closed loop. I worry that both the material and the social capital needed to (re)shape social conditions will arise only from and circulate only between those who attend elite R1 universities. I mean, Harkavy suggests that the departments, programs, and institutes at R1 universities create and sustain those knowledges and skills that produce the scholars and thoughtful people who will drive our K–12 education, who will fashion new cooperatives and entrepreneurial ventures, and who will become our community activists and political leaders. As such, the knowledge and skills to implement a more just and inclusive democracy will be disseminated from the R1 university. Harkavy also explains that it is necessary that universities strive to be democratic civic universities, sites where university folk work alongside members of the surrounding communities to address and ameliorate the problems on the ground. This “would involve significant and ongoing engagement of an institution's comprehensive assets (academic, human, cultural, and economic) in partnership with community members to produce knowledge and educate ethical students with the ability to help create and maintain just, anti-racist, democratic societies” (Harkavy 53). The democratic civic university would then nurture a culture of democracy that exceeds mere voting practices—democracy as a way of life (Dewey 226). Prima facie, this seems like a noble goal. And yet, I still worry that those university folks who do this work will be a small representative group of people who bear particular life experiences and perhaps phenotypic markers.I would suggest that other sites outside of the R1 university (e.g., the trade union meeting, the settlement house, the church, the community garden, etc.) will need to be taken as legitimate sites of knowledge creation or legitimate sites of communication and joint activity (Collins 269). This would at least bring differing life experiences to the table; that is, it would bring differing life experiences to the fore and recognize alternative non-academic sources of insight and wisdom. These sites and alternative sources of knowledge, of course, could work in conjunction with the efforts of democratic universities.Harkavy argues that revolutionary change is required (51). There is a need for a revolutionary change in the way R1 universities conceive and implement their missions, how they prepare their students, how they engage the surrounding neighborhoods. I wonder if the revolution is radical enough. I wonder if it may be necessary to question the neoliberal ideals, the acquisitiveness and commodification, that all too often accompany the discussion of democracy and democratic implementation in the United States. Nota bene, this democratic republic denied women and black and indigenous folk basic dignities for more than a century. This democratic republic also continues to compel its youth to acquire (marketable) occupation-related skills and credentials. Perhaps the revolutionary change Harkavy proposes will need to be far more radical than was first proposed. Perhaps our revolutions will need to engage in the revaluation and transvaluation of our intervening background assumptions (McBride, Ethics 32). We very well may need to entertain new economic models and critically reassess the presuppositions of our political economy (McBride, “Leftist” 88–90). We may need to incorporate additional black, brown, and indigenous bodies into the faculty at R1 institutions, and create a curriculum that speaks to experiences that fall outside of heteropatriarchy and Western neoliberal techno-industrialism (McBride, “Culture” 24). We may need to rethink our tacit values, norms, and ends-in-view.Lastly, I worry that the conception of democracy that is evoked in Harkavy's paper may be too attached to the neoliberal capitalist model that pervades the United States. Our R1 universities are plainly tied to economic solvency, the growth and management of university endowments, outpacing competitor institutions, and the securing of substantial corporate and government grants to fund labs, research, and capital projects. In “the market,” the R1 university must be engaged in protecting and furthering the institution's prestige and economic interests. This concern with pecuniary matters seems to suggest a tension in Harkavy's proposal, if R1 universities are meant to be the primary drivers of democratic social amelioration.Furthermore, one could argue that the United States has never genuinely achieved a thoroughgoing and tenable democracy. If democracy denotes the (well-ordered) rule by the many or a republic wherein the power lies in the body of citizens who hold their representatives accountable, then the United States has fallen short. Historically, black, indigenous, and various people of color were disenfranchised and barred from educational and economic opportunities, their labor exploited. Centuries passed before women (of all races and ethnicities) were afforded basic civil rights. I would argue that there is still considerable work to be done—democracy has unfinished business. Given the persistent inequities in sex, race, and class, we may need to critically reassess the hopes, goals, and conceptions of democracy that pervade our society and the communities within.I am led to think of W. E. B. Du Bois and his conception of democracy. Du Bois boldly asserts that, due to greed and ignorance, we have never truly achieved democracy in the United States (Darkwater 78). Much of his work was aimed at making this ideal a reality. For Du Bois, democracy was more than voting rights; “democracy means the opening of opportunity to the disinherited to contribute to civilization and the happiness of men” (“Revelation” 1064). It means the “loosing of possibilities of mankind for the development of a higher and broader and more varied human culture” (“Revelation” 1064). Du Bois argues that all human beings, even the oppressed and subordinated populations, should be “co-workers in the kingdom of culture” (Souls 9). Education should aim at the full development of the child, not mere technical training, not mere support of present industrial needs (Darkwater 121, 123). We can teach children that “this world is not perfection, but development . . . that the primary object of our training is not the work but the worker—not the maintenance of present industrial caste but the development of human intelligence by which drudgery may be lessened and beauty widened” (Darkwater 121). If we wish to curtail sexism and racism, if we want a better (more democratic) world, we must train better children for the future. This, of course, may bring us to radical, revolutionary ideas about how to restructure and fund our K–12 schools, especially those schools and institutions that service BIPOC populations that have been historically precluded from access and opportunity.