Ivory Tower Research Articles

In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: An Ethical Exploration of Citizen Assessments of American University Presidents’ Political Endorsements

Higher education leaders sometimes transgress norms of political involvement. Despite some norm-violating behaviors, legal consequences are sparse. Some argue that this is based on concerns over taxpayers impugning regulators’ motives as partisan. Public skepticism is warranted, especially as university officials engage in unlawful forms of political activism that can go unenforced. What explains citizens’ tolerance for norm-violating political activities within higher education institutions? Furthermore, what drives citizens to blame some leaders for engaging in legally precarious political behaviors while providing more latitude for others who act similarly? Drawing from research on citizen accountability as well as partisan cue-led attitudes, authors argue that tolerance for political involvement in higher education contexts is explained by an institutional leader’s partisanship and sectoral type, that is, private versus public institution. To test these claims, authors fielded a survey experiment drawing on a Lucid panel. Findings show evidence that a leader’s partisanship and the institution’s sectoral type influence individuals’ acceptance or rejection of a university president’s endorsement of a political candidate, dependent upon the respondent’s partisan characteristics. Findings also confirm the emerging politicization of higher educational spaces, highlighting the implications for understanding public perceptions of higher education leaders’ political involvement and the impact on the sector.

Science on tap: pouring knowledge into the local community

Recently, science communication efforts have focused increasingly on sharing research findings with a broader audience. Since its creation in 2010, Science on Tap (SoT) has realized this goal by recruiting scientific professionals from diverse disciplines to share their latest research findings with the general public in a laid-back pub or brewery setting to bridge the gap between perceived “ivory tower” knowledge and public perception. In the past decade, local SoT chapters have been created across the world, including our own program started in 2022 in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, to act as these science boundary spanners. To gauge interest and increase the relevancy of our program, we conducted a descriptive survey of our SoT attendees and received 50 responses. Results indicate that attendees have learned a fair amount of new knowledge from these talks and are primarily drawn in by the topic and speaker. Participants are especially engaged in locally relevant topics such as environmental issues and report the highest enjoyment from learning new information in a relaxed brewery atmosphere. In sum, topics and location have helped our program to be an effective science communication boundary spanner in this community.

Effective Science Communication — A practical guide to surviving as a scientist

Scientists in academia, particularly early career researchers, are required to master a multitude of practices in a higher education context, often learning on the job by a process of incidental osmosis rather than structured training. For example, success in writing grant proposals, presenting and networking at conferences, journal publication, teaching, engaging with publics ‘beyond the ivory tower’, and demonstrating the ‘impact’ of research are essential skills to master to progress an academic career. Training and support in these areas can often be fragmented and/or dependent on good fortune with respect to suitable mentors.

The NEXUS story and its Stakeholder Analysis: Digitalising Multimodal Logistics and the Associated Value Chain Worldwide

The NEXUS project involves innovation and entrepreneurship. The first task of the project team, which is eclectic and includes several different profiles (research assistants, researchers, managers, engineers, designers and marketing specialists) was to do a stakeholder analysis, which involved doing some field work – six unstructured interviews – as well as some secondary data analysis (scientific articles on the Scopus database; Google searches; among others). The main concerns were to: unlock value through stakeholder engagement; move from concept to collaboration – for sustainable port development; and to connect ports worldwide which will involve international stakeholder collaboration and synergies for sustainable innovation. A Stakeholder analysis is a process consisting of identifying the individuals or groups that have a specific interest in a project, which can affect them, or be affected by them, including large groups such as customers and suppliers; employees; shareholders and investors. It is necessary to sort them according to their impact and consequences regarding the project. It is essential to manage stakeholder expectations when making decisions, especially in a project with thirty-five partners and with a global reach. The initial funding is around 92 million euros (approved by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP)), to ensure the ambitious implementation of the new NEXUS platform and other related products. To minimize backlash, early as well as ongoing stakeholder involvement is a prerequisite. Strategy formulation should not occur in an “ivory tower” and involvement is key. For effective and efficient decision-making, to minimize risks, which need to be identified as well as all the connections and relationships to be created and nurtured. The research question at the outset was: How may we successfully implement a multi-partner project which involves considerable investment, and which aims to digitalize maritime ports worldwide? The theme is, currently, without precedent as the impact intended is for there to be a positive impact on all stakeholders involved – a win-win situation all around. The project will finish in 31-12-2025 and will produce 28 innovative solutions for commercialization. NEXUS is a green and digital project which is up to date as regards the latest sustainability norms and regarding overall operational efficiency in multimodal logistics. Work Package 10 is a specific exploitation, internationalization, promotion, and dissemination package.

Exploring uncharted wilderness: a new conceptualization of transformative leadership education

In this explorative essay, we ask how to integrate current development in entrepreneurship education with an education for societal transformation towards sustainability, more explicitly phrased as what and how educators should teach to make students develop transformative capabilities and build action competence for leading societal transformation. We conclude that entrepreneurship education has much to offer and that educators and students ought to transgress institutional borders and explore wilderness together to learn how to create transformative leadership education. Current knowledge indicates that a purposeful education for this end should address seven complementary competencies where students learn to take action, collaborate, engage with society, manage own growth, ground themselves, scout the future, and reframe the system. Due to its inherent qualities, entrepreneurship education, built on engagement in real-world transformative problems, can be considered the most potent foundation for such aspirations. However, as current educational institutions are formed by the malfunctioning and unsustainable system they serve, today’s institutions might not be the best forerunners of change in any pedagogical practice. This is why we also conclude that progressive educators need to leave their ivory towers, classrooms, and lecture halls behind and engage in real transformative problems head-on with their students by their sides.

Involution life in the ivory tower: a Chinese university’s teacher perceptions on academic profession and well-being under the Double First-class Initiative

Involution life in the ivory tower: a Chinese university’s teacher perceptions on academic profession and well-being under the Double First-class Initiative

Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower: Rock Music on Campus in the Sixties by James M. Carter (review)

Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower: Rock Music on Campus in the Sixties by James M. Carter (review)

‘From the Ivory Tower’? Memory Workers and Mnemonic Practices in Communities

AbstractMemory work involves mnemonic practices such as remembering, forgetting, and enactment of the past to address past wrongdoing, foster future action, and contribute to a sense of belonging. Working with diversity and plurality of memories, however, necessitates confronting the underlying politico‐ethical considerations and struggles when memory work transcends organizational bounds. This study focuses on the viewpoints of memory workers in communities in order to theorize the various possibilities and limitations of memory work as such. In this work, the politico‐ethical tensions are evident between the requirements of practicing an occupation and those of the communities, who in turn exhibit hierarchies, conflicts, and diversity within and between themselves. I suggest that taking a community‐centric approach to memory work can serve the dynamic integrity of memories, and foster community engagement and empowerment. Memory workers, then, can account for the politico‐ethical struggles over memories by orchestrating interpretive, open, and embodied mnemonic practices to remain in tune with the diverse, disputed, polyvocal, and ever‐unfolding memories. The contributions of this paper carry implications for a more pluralistic and dynamic approach to memory work, suited to our times marked by increased historical consciousness, rival memories, and fierce debates over what and how must be remembered.

Language science outreach through schools and social media: critical considerations

Abstract As researchers who rely on federal funding and community participation, we have an obligation to return scientific knowledge to the community. Our outreach goals are to share information about language development and sensory impairments, introduce language science to future scientists, distribute scientific results accessibly, and illuminate the breadth of what science and scientists look like. We seek to achieve this in two ways: by sharing about language science beyond the ivory tower through short videos on social media and easy-to-read articles on our blog, and through educational outreach. For the latter, in recent efforts we designed and implemented after-school programming for young public schoolchildren, targeting early negative attitudes about STEM abilities. We presented profiles of underrepresented scientists in a range of fields, including language science, and discussed language modalities using observation games to help children appreciate science as a creative process of questions and failure – something they could do, not just “others” who do not look like them. We used the Draw-a-Scientist Task to assess our impact: children’s drawings were more representative after our program. In this article, we explore our missteps, difficulties, and successes.

Ivory tower in MD/PhD programmes: sticky floor, broken ladder and glass ceiling

ObjectiveAchieving gender equity in academic medicine is not only a matter of social justice but also necessary in promoting an innovative and productive academic community. The purpose of this study...

Out of the Ivory Tower: Unveiling Student Interactions with Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

Out of the Ivory Tower: Unveiling Student Interactions with Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

The Mode 3 Networked University

The idea of a modern university is a constantly changing and often contested concept. This paper traces the idea of a university using three modes. These modes are the Mode 1 Ivory Tower, Mode 2 Factory and Mode 3 Network. This framework draws upon higher education literature as well as three modes of knowledge production. I use these modes as a framework to describe the genealogical and historical development of the university in the Western world. These however are not purely historical and elements of their characteristics can be found within and between university institutions today. A genealogy shows a historical path dependency (i.e a teaching and research institution) of the idea of a university and a new materialism perspective shows the coming together of the many elements of the network assemblage which includes the discourse on the idea of a university clashing with new ideas, technologies and policy. The growth and development of the modern university from small, autonomous, elite and autonomous in mode 1 to large, mass regulated factory with marketplace outputs within neoliberal societies is well documented. The Mode 3 Network University is emerging with a potential for universal access with networked societies and technologies and has many actors influencing its becoming and idea. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and a broadening multidisciplinary approach to the field of Networked Learning has been called for and I introduce the possibility of theoretically analysing the becoming and enactment of the Mode 3 Network University using concepts and frameworks from the broad field of New Materialism. Such approaches take into account the complex assemblage and network of actors which are human and non-human in the growing and diversifying university. The growth and marketisation of the university has added to this complexity with commercial 'unbundling' taking place. Degrees, institutions and functions are being unbundled and rebundled and this active complex network of actors including technologies, humans (academics, students, employers, wider public) and the residual path dependency of the three modes are in tension and conflict but come together to enact the modern university. New Material methodologies allow for these many influences to come together in a 'flat ontology' to allow for a more nuanced and new approach to research in Networked Learning.

Boundary Work and Strategies of Compliance: The Underlife of the Ivory Tower

This study examines strategies employed by university administrators and managers to gain compliance from subordinates even as they attempted to increase their workload. These strategies have received comparatively little attention within organizational studies of compliance. The participants in our study included employees at a public university in the Midwest identifying themselves as either “staff/faculty” or “managers/administrators.” Our findings indicate that when administrators and managers are unable to use formal rewards and punishments they attempt to gain compliance from subordinates through two main strategies that we identify as overtures and interactional trebuchet. Both strategies represent a sequence of interaction that we refer to more generally as “boundary work”—a set of activities through which boundaries on time, resources, and workload are defended or diminished, and for which we provide a model. We draw upon organizational, symbolic interactionist, and dramaturgical theories in the analysis of our data.

The judge, the AI, and the Crown: a collusive network

ABSTRACT The article examines the potential implications of ChatGPT ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) [Alec Radford and others, ‘Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training’ Amazon Web Services (2018) <https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/openai-assets/research-covers/language-unsupervised/language_understanding_paper.pdf> accessed 28 May 2024; When this article was submitted, only ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 was available. However, during the revision stage, ChatGPT-4o (also known as GPT-4 Omnus) was introduced to the market, as announced on 13 May 2024.] in judicial decision-making process. This is especially salient given that judicial decisions are made within an interactive ritual chain (Bergman Blix) rather than an ivory tower. This cutting-edge natural language processing model leverages deep learning techniques to potentially aid judiciary members in formulating legal judgements. Therefore, this article assesses the capabilities, limitations, and potential applications of ChatGPT, aiming to evaluate the model's feasibility as a collaborative contributor to legal judgements. In particular, the article examines the utilisation of ChatGPT as an adjunctive tool, supporting human judges in their decision-making processes and, consequently, establishing to what extent artificial intelligence (AI) is used as a tool or collaborator in judicial decision-making. This determines authorship and, accordingly, ownership of judgements.

In pursuit of knowledge: Liberal education as a public ideal of higher education

Higher education has often been accused of its anti-social character, represented by the metaphor of the ‘ivory tower’. However, the idea of the pursuit of knowledge per se, which is associated with the ivory tower, has not been widely recognized as a public ideal of higher education. In this study, by drawing on the 20th-century British educational philosopher Paul H. Hirst’s theory of liberal education, I revisit and re-evaluate the Newmanian idea of pursuit of knowledge as an end itself as a public ideal for higher education. I argue that the public criteria provided by discipline-rooted knowledge are among the criteria that are most able to define and legitimise higher education. These public criteria are compatible with the distinctive nature of higher education, which is essentially aimed at adult citizens and linked to research as the creation of knowledge, and can even serve to legitimise the cognitive structure of the society.

How to Do Relevant Research: From the Ivory Tower to the Real World

How to Do Relevant Research: From the Ivory Tower to the Real World

The ivory tower, Harry Potter, and beyond: More essays on the works of J.K. Rowling By Lana A.Whited (Ed.), Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2023. pp. 424. $55.00 (hbk)

The ivory tower, Harry Potter, and beyond: More essays on the works of J.K. Rowling By Lana A.Whited (Ed.), Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2023. pp. 424. $55.00 (hbk)

Classical Universities in the Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Empire and the USSR: Leaving the Ivory Tower

Classical Universities in the Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Empire and the USSR: Leaving the Ivory Tower

From our ivory towers: Enacting our collective daily resistance through ungrading in a feminist co-mentoring group

Grading has been central to schooling of all levels. Aligned with many critical educators, we argue that conventional grading systems in higher education contexts perpetuate a transactional relationship between student and professor and student and university. In this collaborative self-study, we, three pre-­tenured teacher educators at the same midsize, midwestern university, formed a feminist co-mentoring group and explored ungrading in our own teacher preparation classrooms. Through narrative inquiry, our data uncovered themes of (1) traditional grading practices limit; (2) renewed resolve in ungrading despite obstacles; (3) ungrading as an act of resistance.

Inside the Ivory Tower: How Student Journalists Reason About Ethics

ABSTRACT This article presents an interview study that investigates student journalists’ perception of ethics and moral reasoning. It aims to understand how student journalists – an important indicator for the future of journalism, yet an understudied group – perceive and practice ethics. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with student journalists from three different independent college newsrooms. The findings suggested that the student journalists have an instrumental perceptions of ethics, seeing ethics as rules that must be followed. When confronted with ethical dilemmas, which the student journalists may misidentify, they tend to consult editors and follow advice without asking for explanations. Most student reporters demonstrate moral reasoning at Kohlberg’s preconventional and conventional levels, with editors reaching the post-conventional level. The findings underscore the necessity for a more integrated ethics education. Based on the results, the article raises concerns, points out challenges, and suggests opportunities for ethics education in student media.