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The place of universities in today’s world is more uncertain than ever. Broadly, and under dramatically different conditions, universities worldwide have de-emphasized their historical commitment to the cultivation of critical thought and the pursuit of basic knowledge in favor of more instrumental priorities. Whereas increasingly, the planet itself, formerly understood as a patchwork of regions or “areas,” has become an object of study shared across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. In addition to reshaping teaching and research, these changes have focused renewed attention on universities themselves—and their multiple constituencies—as global, social agents. Both the internal critique of institutional contradictions and external pressure exerted by hostile interests arguably reflect the new uncertainties.
The Committee on Global Thought is a forum for exploring the implications of such large-scale tendencies in specific terms. In this spirit, “Where Is the University?” inaugurates a multifaceted program on the university as a world where microcosm and macrocosm meet, raising the kinds of questions from which genuine knowledge has long arisen.
Introduction: Reinhold Martin, Chair, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
Response: Manan Ahmed, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
Panelists:
Andrea Cassatella, Makerere University
Senior Research Fellow, Makerere Institute of Social Research
Abigail Huston Boggs, Wesleyan University
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Isaac Kamola, Trinity College
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Sharon Stein, University of British Columbia
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Studies
