SOGOLAS Research Seminar: The Public University as Real Utopia

Drawing on the social thought of the late American sociologist Erik Olin Wright, I endeavour to theorize the public university as a real utopia. For Wright, ‘real utopias’ are institutional arrangements which advance democratic goals and support personality development. Public universities are universities which receive public financing, encourage access to high-quality higher education for citizens without distinction and are spaces of open intellectual inquiry. Theorizing higher education as a real utopia means identifying principles in the university’s self-understanding which are empowering. These are academic freedom, critical thinking or criticality and higher education as a public good. A university where these principles are realized is a pocket of freedom in the sense of enabling meaningful work and studies. The university ought to be seen as a non-capitalist space in which alternatives to the status quo can be imagined. Only then can a 'knowledge society' be achieved. In other words, institutional autonomy is undetachable for a modality of ‘untimeliness’ to exist vis-à-vis the present within academia.

Speaker: Martin Aidnik

Moderator: Prof. Peeter Selg

Dr Eric Lybeck from Manchester University is the seminar's discussant. 

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