PROJECT: Poliversitas

Kosmopolitica is launching an academic project for Europe. Poliversitas – Campus Europe. We are calling on all people with MAs and PhDs (and other graduate degrees) interested in research, teaching and collaboration to join.

We want to build an academic archipelago which is neither dependent nor limited to the university hall because we believe that higher education is a condition of social and political participation, therefore, if cannot be a luxury. Poliversitas seeks to bring academic work out of the university hall.

As many other institutions, the university is undergoing a profound crisis of values and, just as much, a crisis of identity. Academic institutions of higher learning, which once were thought to be the places where the intellectual character of democracy was built, have turned into organizations of a very different kind.

A form of intellectual clientelism has progressively grown and taken hold. The consequence has been the visible deterioration of the quality of work done in classrooms and the dispensation of unprofitable forms of thinking. At the very same time, the number and salaries of administrators has ballooned. As many academics recognize, the result has been that the university has become an increasingly hostile space for serious intellectual work.

At the same time, the form of intellectual skills that the university used to provide has been put out of reach for vast segments of society and this is especially so in times of crisis. For many, education is simply not an affordable option.

But while just about everyone is quick to point out the depth of the problem, few solutions are being offered.