Entering the contentious terrain of threats to and ills of higher education, I suggest that we are, in Wittgenstein’s terms, in the grip of a metaphysical and epistemological picture shaping what research universities should do and what counts as doing it well (being “excellent”). Shifting that picture can help reorient higher education in the 21st C—specifically, shifting the picture of subjects and objects of knowledge as separate and independent, each characterized by their similarity to relevant others, in favor of a picture that emphasize s entanglement and saliencies—and a paradigm shift away from laboratory science, toward community-based participatory research.

Naomi Scheman, Professor Emerita of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, is a free-range philosopher and political activist living in Boston. She edited Feminist Interpretations of Wittgenstein, and has two volumes of collected papers: Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority, & Privilege (1993), and Shifting Ground: Knowledge & Reality, Transgression & Trustworthiness (2011).

Join Zoom Meeting

https://msu.zoom.us/j/99329403867
Meeting ID: 993 2940 3867
Passcode: 07201925