Changing the Conversation about Higher Education's Public Mission and Work

Abstract

Welcome: Julie Ellison, Director, Imagining America, University of Michigan. Presenter: Scott Peters, Assistant Professor, Department of Education, Cornell University. Abstract: What are—and what should be—the educational, cultural, and political roles of scholars in public life? To illuminate and reconstruct threatened traditions of civic professionalism in the American academy, we must take up the task of moving this question to the center of a new conversation about higher education’s public mission and work. Enlivened by historical and contemporary stories of engagement, such a conversation can be an important avenue for learning and change.