Deconstructing the discourse of community service and academic entrepreneurship: the ideological colonisation of the university

Abstract

From text: In my view the discourse on community service and academic entrepeneurship, currently fashionable in the circles of higher education (both as a field of study and in university management) could benefit from some deconstructive reflection. Such an exercise in (self-)critique need not evoke images of academic civil war within the confines of the university. In spite of the fact that we all tend to conceptualise argumentation as war (as George Lakoff and other cognitive scientists have shown), critique can also be a co-operative enterprise that shares an orientation to strong fallibilism; is (therefore) open to sharp criticism and self-criticism; creates and maintains communicative trust, and clings to the ethical hope of reaching mutual understanding (Habermas). This is the spirit in which I would like the remarks that follow to be taken.