CFP: Symposium on higher education as a public good

Deadline: Jan 20, 2023

Please also now reserve the date of March 28, 2023, for our jointly badged and organized symposium on higher education as a public good, in collaboration with the society-associated journal Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education (PTHE), the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT), and the Philosophy of Education Society Australasia (PESA). Please find below call for proposals to present in the symposium. There is still time to submit, and if you submit a proposal by January 20 at the latest, we shall take your submission into account. We aim to extend invitations to the speakers by end of January/start February – and to send out more information about the symposium shortly afterwards.

Call for Proposals

The Editors of Educational Philosophy and Theory and Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education (Michael Peters and John Petrovic, Eds, respectively) along with the Chair of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society (PaTHES, Søren Bengtsen) and the Vice President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA, Sonja Arndt) invite you to contribute a paper to a symposium on higher education and/or the university as a public good. Papers submitted for presentation at the symposium will also be considered for publication in special issues of both journals.

The symposium will take place as an online event jointly organized by PaTHES and Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia PESA on March 28, 2023.

Abstract

In a now classic explication of public goods, Paul Samuelson (1947, 1954) distinguishes between private consumption goods and collective consumption goods. Samuelson’s basic definition is that a public good is one that – having been produced for a given individual or group of individuals - can be consumed by more than those for whom it was initially intended at no extra cost. This is also known as being non- rivalrous. Another traditional characteristic of a public good is that it is non-excludable; anyone can receive its benefits. The two primary characteristics of public goods make them unamenable to market production or, at least, quite difficult to deal with through market processes.

How should we re-examine this theory, especially as it applies to education? How can we rethink the public generally and public goods specifically and how have these notions changed over the last half century? Do we need to reconsider them in late capitalism? Universities, as traditionally viewed as connected to the idea of the public good, are navigating between various expectations of knowledge production, impact, and societal partnership – not all purely linked to the notion of public goods. Universities and higher education programmes have been accused of consumerism, protectionism, extractivism and neo-nationalism. Does the idea of the university as a societal and cultural institution need to be re-enacted and perhaps even re-thought? How can thinking about higher education or the university as a public good inform such re-enactment?

For this symposium, we seek proposals that address these kinds of question and, ultimately, how such examinations inform where and how higher education fits as public goods, if they do. While not an exclusive list, we welcome proposals dealing with the following general topics around public goods:

• Origins of public goods and the public
• Expanding orthodox understandings of public goods
• Implications of expanding conceptualizations of the public goods as local, global, translocal
• The transformation of the Public Sphere / Rethinking the public sphere in the 21st century
• Globalization & multiplicity of the public
• Global public goods
• Private vs Public provision of “public” goods
• Knowledge & science as global public goods
• Environmental public goods
• International comparative understandings of the public and what is a public good
• Trust and the erosion of public goods

More specifically, authors might consider some of the following guiding questions:

• How might the concepts of 'public goods' and 'the public good' play out, either in relation to the university or the educational processes of higher education? Do they play out differently across the disciplines?
• Which non-economic goods might come into play as far as higher education is concerned?
• Are there significant distinctions to be observed between 'public good' and 'social good' in the context of the university?
• What implications arise for university leadership from debates around public goods or the public good?
• How might tensions be addressed between national and global public goods?
• Can helpful classifications be developed to help in distinguishing different kinds of public goods for the university?
• What pedagogical implications arise from considerations of public goods and the public good?
• In relation to universities and higher education, are there other key concepts to be identified that are contiguous with 'public goods' and 'the public good' (such as 'public sphere'; 'public realm'; 'public mission'; 'public intellectual')?

Process

• Proposals should not exceed 600 words
• Proposals can be submitted directly to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with “Public Goods” in the subject line.
• Proposals should have a separate cover page including author name(s), affiliations, email address, and time zone.
• Proposals will be considered by the organizers and authors will receive notification of acceptance or rejection for presentation in the symposium.
• A limited number of authors accepted to present will subsequently be invited to develop their presentations into articles. Invitation does not guarantee final acceptance as all articles will go through a double-blind review process.
• The organizers assume sole authority to assign an article to one of the two journals.

Timeline

• The proposal deadline is December 31, 2022.
• Authors will be informed of acceptance/rejection into the symposium by February 1, 2023.
• The symposium will be held on March 28, 2023.
• Invitation to develop the presentation into an article by April 11, 2023.
• Authors will then be contacted by the Editor of the journal to which their article was assigned for a specific submission-to-publication timeline. The editors will provide a minimum of four months for article submission.

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

CFP: SOLIDARITY AND THE UNIVERSITY

Deadline: Feb 20, 2023

UNIVERSITY OF GDAŃSK, POLAND

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS & PARTICIPATION
SOLIDARITY AND THE UNIVERSITY
5TH ANNUAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION CONFERENCE
13-15TH JUNE 2023, UNIVERSITY OF GDAŃSK, POLAND

There are many ways in which university is conceived of today. One of the most common discourses revolve around performativity, measurable accountability, excellence, learning outcomes and commodification of knowledge. The other path leads to variously understood innovations treated as an imperative of the desired changes in higher education sector that should prepare young people to ever-changing reality. Yet, another perspective relates to the critique of traditional, semi-feudal and anti-egalitarian culture of university as an institution. All these images of the university pertain to a monochromatic and exhaustive imaginary of the university. But universitas is practiced in many ways, and in numerous contexts, concerning radically different objects of study.

The conference has a double aim: the first one is to come to an understanding of how different forms of academic practices contribute to the emergence of universitas, and in what ways – if at all – they can bring about the community of a university and solidarity among its elements and beyond.

During this year’s conference we offer to focus on the universal of the university that is created within the multitude of diverse academic practices. We would like to address questions regarding the commonality of the university emerging in diverse contexts and practices.

• Are we in solidarity with each other as academics?
• Is the university a place of emergence of solidarity? And if so, then how do we understand this solidarity?
• With whom and/or with what we are in solidarity as academics, researchers, scientists?

Addressing the conference theme questions requires turning to university practices and self-identifications that are usually left aside in philosophical or humanistic studies on the matter, that is, the practices, concepts and understandings developed within experimental sciences, speculative natural sciences, earth sciences, and medical sciences.

That is why we would like to invite the conference attendees, to both – submit ideas for different forms of contributions (details below) – as well as to take part in an attempt to grasp the ways in which the commonality of university is built in various places.

Therefore, we plan to arrange and facilitate discussions on the matter with the representatives of numerous scientific disciplines in various sites of the University of Gdańsk.

In this way we hope to pose the central question for our conference, that of academic solidarity, or – to put it more precisely – solidarity that is the consequence of enacting and sustaining the commonality in the diversity of our academic lives.

The link between solidarity and university is far from obvious, especially today, when most of the academic environment is rendered in terms of competition, rankings, and entrepreneurship. This was one of the reasons to invite European Solidarity Centre onboard as a co-organiser of the conference. We are delighted to announce that the first day of the conference will be held in the premises of the Centre, where the attendees will have the opportunity to visit the exhibition dedicated to the Polish ‘Solidarity’ movement.

Indeed, we seek to organise an event that would consist of multiple occasions for genuine conferring, i.e. studying together a particular issue.

The call for papers invites the participants to submit an abstract up to 500 words to one of two possible forms of presentations:

The first possibility for presentation – working papers, research reports and analyses or developed arguments related to the central issues of the conference:

• The emergence of academic communities
• Building solidarity in academic world
• Policies enabling/enhancing academic solidarity
• University in solidarity with whom/what?
• Communality, universality, and the variety of university practices, disciplines, cultures

The second option for the presentation is the submission of the fragments of (auto)ethnographic journals, relating to the academics’ experiences of academic practices that make universitas happen.

After the acceptance of the abstract the extended versions (up to 3000 words) of submission will be uploaded to the conference website.

TIMELINE

• 10 NOVEMBER 2022: OFFICIAL CONFERENCE WEBSITE LAUNCH
• 11 NOVEMBER 2022: CALL FOR ABSTRACTS & PARTICIPATION
• 20 FEBRUARY 2023: DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS
• UP TO 01 APRIL 2023: CONFERENCE ACCEPTANCE LETTERS ARE SENT OUT
• 15 MAY 2023 SUBMISSION OF AN EXTENDED VERSION OF THE ABSTRACT
• 01 JUNE 2023: CONFERENCE PROGRAM IS PUBLISHED
• 13-15 JUNE 2023: WELCOME TO GDAŃSK – CONFERENCE 2023 TAKES PLACE

THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE CONFERENCE AND SUBMISSION FORM HERE:

Website: http://www.solidarityanduniversity.ug.edu.pl