Beyond being ivory towers
From KLAMediaWiki
BEYOND IVORY TOWERS
Report by Kamau Victor Gitau Compiled by Emma Lochary
workshop at the 2007 WSF
Nairobi, Kenya
Tuesday, January 23rd
Terrain: Democratization of Knowledge and Information
How can universities make another world possible?
We’ll explore how civil society, students, academics, and university staff can be part of university-based responses to the needs of local and global communities.
We want to:
Hear about your experiences with higher education and community engagement Discuss your ideas of how universities can contribute to their local and global communities Plan how we can expand the movement of higher education institutions committed to serving, strengthening, and partnering with their communities Encourage you to join the spreading international movement of engaged higher education! Organized by Innovations in Civic Participation—for more information:
contact Emma at lochery@icicp.org
Participants:
Name Institution E-mail
Esther Warren Haverford College, USA ewarren@haverford.edu Lukas Leuthold Haverford College, USA lleuthol@haverford.edu Noel Salazar University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania nbsalazar@gmail.com Timon Richiger High School in St. Gall, Switzerland t.richiger@gmx.ch Alanna Copenhaver Haverford College, USA acopenha@haverford.edu Adrion Doaig Sufo, University Rapperswit, Switzerland adoerig@bluewin.ch Jenny Rabinowich Haverford College, USA jrabinow@haverford.edu Kamau Victor Gitau Moi University (Eldoret), Kenya victorggk@yahoo.com Eleva Rastello Tangaza College, Catholic University, Kenya sistaele@hotmail.com Daniel Fibiger University of California, Santa Barbara, USA dfibiger@umail.ucsb.edu Sarah VanHooser Vanderbilt University, USA sarah.e.vanhooser@vanderbilt.edu Gachora Ngunjiri FOCUS Kenya gachora@gmail.com Pia Fehle SUFO, Switzerland piafehle@bluewin.ch Valerie Glauses SUFO, Switzerland vali.glauses@bleuwin.ch Mulabbi Samuel Makerere University, Uganda mulabbis@yahoo.com Danny Chivers People and Planet, UK dannychivers@wildman.com Lea Hurlimann SUFO, Switzerland Lea.hue@gmx.ch Jerónimo Sánchez Instituto Universitario de Barlovento, Venezuela Jesan10@yahoo.es Prof. Alejandro Correa Bolivarian University of Venezuela acorreaortega@yahoo.com Elsie Etaka Eyong University of Douala, Cameroon eyongetakr@yahoo.com Atonga Moses Bugema University, Uganda Moseluck@yahoo.com Marc Arseneau Coady International Institute, Canada/Rwanda marcarseneau@gmail.com
Notes from Workshop:
Introduction
Emma Lochery introduced the session by discussing her work with the Talloires Network, an international network of the heads of institutions of higher education committed to civic engagement. She introduced some main questions to address in the seminar:
How can other groups of stakeholders such as faculty or students get involved in networks like the Talloires Network? What experiences have workshop participants had with civic engagement? What challenges do institutions of higher education face? How do these barriers differ across institutions and groups of stakeholders? What tools would be useful for supporting university civic engagement? The participants then each introduced themselves and added what their interest in higher education, civic engagement, and social change was.
Perspectives differed; however they all revolved around the different ways universities can interact with communities. For instance:
Students from Haverford College were interested in looking at the special position of students in communities and the institution of the university as part of democratic society.
FOCUS is a network of Christian groups from every university in Kenya that has existed since 1973. They organize an annual mission outreach, working not only with matters of faith but most importantly with community work—for example they assisted victims of the recent floods in Kenya. They also work to connect research work to communities’ needs. In particular, students are encouraged to bring the different perspectives of their home villages. In all constituencies, there is a slice of the annual budget that is earmarked annually for community development: FOCUS hopes to offer a forum for students to offer MPs suggestions as to how the fund should be administered. At the international level, FOCUS works with student groups from abroad who wish to visit Kenya.
Catholic University—Tangaza College had around 132 students attended the WSF. There was a struggle before the administration agreed to allow students to take time from other activities to participate in the forum. Often administrators hold the view that book-based learning outweighs experiential learning. Degrees at the college focus on social and youth ministry with students completing weekly service in Nairobi.
People and Planet, UK, is a nationwide student campaigning group. It runs international campaigns, but there are separate groups within various universities who design their own activities. The group focuses on problems outside the institution of the university. However, P&P’s representative at the WSF, Danny Chivers, commented that members should also and often do think about issues related to the workings of the university institution itself—for example, the financing of higher education, ethical investment questions, and the relationship between corporations and universities (as related to funding, employment, research direction, etc). One interesting question facing groups like P&P is how to link their international campaigns to issues related to higher educational institutions themselves.
Roman Kuenzler, an international relations student from Geneva, was interested in ensuring networks of students and social movements can include members from both Global South and Global North and build linkages among groups in Global South. From his travels working with civil society in Francophone West Africa, he observed that often networks exist in separation from each other and that much knowledge and potential for solidarity movements is lost.
Professors from the Instituto Universitario de Barlovento and the
Bolivarian University of Venezuela discussed the new struggle in higher education happening in their country. There is a push to focus on the community context of education and the process of building new forms of national identity and constructing tools to fight discrimination and intolerance.
The Coady International Institute aims to create effective solutions to reduce global poverty and injustice through education, action partnerships, and initiatives to help young Canadians become active global citizens. The Coady Youth Associate at the seminar, Marc Arseneau, discussed his time in Kigali at the only medical training college in the country, where he worked on project evaluation and nurse training courses.
The question led to a discussion of research models that can be used to relate community needs and academic research.
Gachora Ngunjiri from FOCUS explained how at Moi University, medical students are attached to a village clinic. They identify issues which then serve as the basis for hypothesis and research. The development of this research model counts towards their degree. Other students engage government departments in policy discussion; they work with organizations like the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA). For example, they have done a study on banana cultivation, looking at inputs and production, and then feeding back the research to relevant communities.
Eleva Rastello from the Tangaza College at Catholic University explained how students at the college work with faith-based and community-based organizations through a system of attachments. Research begins with among people and communities before books are consulted. The model is linked to the fact that students come to the college after 2-3 years experience of voluntary service.
Problem: Research Needs ‘within the Ivory Tower’
Following from the discussion of research models based around community engagement, the group discussed the question of what other barriers there are to research that meets the needs of communities—and what barriers there are to making sure that research reaches communities.
A major problem is limited university resources, a conclusion backed up by a survey carried up out before the conference that led to the establishment of the Talloires Network in 2005. Out of 25 universities located in 24 countries across five regions: (Africa, Asia, Australia, North America and South America), the primary barrier to the expansion of civic engagement programs were financial. This constraint affects the targeting of research as well as the base amount of research conducted at the institution, apart from solely civic engagement activities.
Additionally, when overstretched institutions are tasked to carry out teaching requirements, then their resources don’t stretch to doing research as well. So research happens in richer countries.
Taking the example of a university in Indonesia—all the books were from Australia, the US, and Canada. Lessons were based on those books and not experiential learning.
The idea that research was heavily based on imported text led seminar participants to conceptualize the student as a ‘vending machine.’ Students are sometimes given material divorced from their local realities and then expected to produce a product that is as disconnected with their reality as the text—their own reality does not impact on the process and they are expected to reproduce what they are given in lessons.
Participants argued that this raises the important point that there is much work to be done inside the ivory tower as well as well as focusing on moving beyond its walls. Reconceptualizing the traditional model of an institution of higher education emphasizes the problems within the institutions as well, not the question of what their place is in society.
Interrogating Privilege
In richer countries, often there is another issue: the group discussed the example of civic engagement programs like that at the University of Pennsylvania. Most students are from relatively rich backgrounds. There was a requirement for community work, but often students’ preconceptions of the world were already formed by the time they reached university—“20 years is too long to go without doing service.”
Roman Kuenzler remarked that this can be linked to a metaphor of the whole of western society as an ivory tower. Students need a connection to the topics they learn about in an academic setting, and civic engagement projects at university alone might not bridge the gap sufficiently if not backed up by earlier experiences.
Sarah VanHooser commented that at Vanderbilt, a university in the American state of Tennessee, many students are engaged and involved in social issues, but their engagement never disrupts the power structure. This brings up a question: how do you help people develop tools that interrogate their own privilege? It can be a very scary process for individuals. But without it, we do not begin to analyze how systems oppress people.
From FOCUS’s point of view, a 3 or 6 month experience does not necessarily change students’ value systems, but by its very existence that opportunity to interact with people from other parts of the works shocks students into thinking about structures in the world.
An example from a Swiss high school: A student lived with asylum seekers, came to realize much of the group were intellectuals and very poor. The asylum seekers came to the school to help with lessons; the resulting experience of standing in solidarity with the asylum seekers provided a powerful lesson for the students.
Social Justice Activism: Issue Commodification?
Linked with these questions is how to handle activism on issues that seem far from students’ realities. “Ideas are not just ideas—they are people’s realities.”
For instance, sometimes there is a commodification of issues: do issues within activism have to be turned into a commodity and marketed? Do they have to become ‘cool’?
Daniel Fibiger discussed this in the context of the Save Darfur campaign. There has been a movement to turn it into graphics used on t-shirts for example—there is a clash between social justice purity vs. commercial response.
Civic Engagement: a Pure Public Relations Exercise?
With the above thoughts in mind, questions were raised about the true impact of civic engagement programs at higher education institutions. At universities like the University of Pennsylvania, where civic engagement is a central mantra of the institution, there is a question of whether, from an administrative point of view, it is mainly a PR project. How deeply does the dedication to community engagement go? Does it reach the students? The faculty?
There is also the danger that international volunteer projects connected with civic engagement make poverty seem exotic. In Belgium, many students want to go abroad to a poor country—but are now being required to work domestically first. There is need to avoid the danger of exoticizing poverty—universities must recognize that poverty exists in its ugly forms very close to home.
“What I research is kept in the library.”
So how can a university effectively push a civic engagement agenda, particularly through its teaching and research?
Students from Uganda present at the seminar remarked that they are involved in research, but find it difficult to take research back into the community. They can’t pass information to the government in a way that would affect policy. Students are looked at with suspicion, and so then often ask, “If what I research is only kept in the library, what’s the point?”
Elsie Etaka Eyong, a student from Cameroon, reported that research at her institution is done very much for academic reasons. Her institution is not familiar at all with civic engagement activities.
Victor Kamau, from Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya, gave an example of when students had attempted to close the gap between academic work and the community. On their campus, students from poor areas account for about 50% of students, and depend on bursaries for higher education; students are therefore often well aware of the problems facing poor communities. One project developed by the students was a plan to deliver information in local languages to the rural neighbors of the universities—local farmers for whom information in English or Swahili is of little use. Students worked with the local chief and arranged the project with the dean. Unfortunately, on the day of the proposed event, the dean suddenly refused to provide the venue.
This example again highlights the need for institutional support. Firstly, appropriate infrastructure makes it possible for students to carry out their ideas—which emphasizes the importance of having civic engagement as one of the central parts of a university’s mission. Even if at times this can seem like a public relations exercise, it can also represent the beginning of a system of support for others’ ideas and visions. Secondly, there is a need for a system that gives students a way to come back together after civic engagement projects or events and reflect on the experience—to discuss it among themselves and share their thoughts with others.
Conclusion: Moving Beyond “Helping”to Standing in Solidarity
The seminar ended with a return to a discussion of the philosophy behind higher education civic engagement. What ethics and worldviews lie behind our conception of the relationships between universities and communities?
Eleva Rastello put it succinctly: “I’ve heard too many times the words ‘to help’. There needs to be a shift from ‘helping’ to standing in solidarity with others.” When thinking about service and community engagement, there needs to be an awareness of power and how it enters into relationships between universities and communities. Engaging with our local and global communities needs to involve an understanding of how to stand in solidarity with others. We must build upon the realization that our realities are the interconnected and only together can we promote effective and sustainable social change.
The seminar closed with a recognition of education as political action. As a catalyst for change, it involves a chance to alter existing inequalities—but only if we move beyond the ivory towers.
Resources
Talloires Network website: http://www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork/
Talloires Declaration on the Civic Roles and Social Responsibilities of Higher Education
http://www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork/TalloiresDeclaration2005.pdf
Innovations in Civic Participation website: www.icicp.org.
For more information on the Talloires Network, ICP, or related matters, please contact Emma Lochery at:
E-mail: lochery@icicp.org
Address: 1776 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Suite 201
Washington, DC 20036
USA
Phone: +1- 202-775-0290
Fax: +1- 202-833-8581
