This article introduces Ronald J. Daniels's book What Universities Owe Democracy. "Daniels calls for universities to commit to more explicit pro-democracy work. 'It is imperative,' he writes, 'in this moment of democratic backsliding, that our universities more self-consciously vindicate their obligations to this most precious and fragile form of self-governance.'" Aspects of this include: a focus on access (and an end to legacy admissions); a responsibility to cultivate "civic literacy"; and support for a form of pluralism that resists the weaponization of difference. I think these are laudable ambitions that need not be presented in a specifically U.S. context (after all, the rest of the world also has things like universities and democracy). I wonder, however, whether universities (especially as currently constituted) are well-equipped for this challenge. While there is a mythos of the universities' historical role in preserving democracy, their ethos of support for the power and privilege of the few reveals something very different.
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