Socially Responsible Higher Education
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Item Realizing sustainable development goals through higher education institutions. Vol. 60, No. 12, March 21–27, 2022.(Association of Indian Universities, 2022-03-27) Association of Indian UniversitiesSistla Rama Devi Pani opens this special issue of University News at a moment when the pandemic has strained the social fabric that Sustainable Development Goals are meant to repair, pushing higher education institutions to ask what their role in that repair looks like. The issue sets the ambition of a universal 2030 agenda against the harder question of how individual universities, working with limited resources and local realities, can act on it at all. Bringing together the AIU Vice Chancellors Meet deliberations, it moves across all seventeen goals through essays on gender equality, employment, clean energy, biodiversity, and inclusive education, alongside institutional profiles and thesis summaries. The contributions show how universities take up the SDGs within their own local contexts and resource constraints. Collectively, the issue frames SDG implementation not as a uniform institutional mandate but as an ongoing process shaped by diverse, locally grounded efforts across higher education institutions.Item Socially responsible higher education: International perspectives on knowledge democracy(Brill Sense, 2021) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshThis book is built upon a foundation of our thinking and practice over a period of 40 years. Our UNESCO Chair, which sprung from the 2009 UNESCO World Conference, provided us with an organisational framework for the theoretical and practical discourse that we have been engaged in since the 1970s (Hall et al., 2013, 2015, 2017a, 2017b; Tandon et al., 2002, 2016a, 2016b, 2017). As we have followed our mandate to build research capacity in the fields of community-based research and social responsibility in higher education in the global South and the excluded North, we have found ourselves in conversations, in conferences, in research projects and networks in all parts of the world where the question is being asked how should universities respond? What are the changing roles of the university today? Is the university contributing to our global crises or does it offer stories of hope? Our book is a contribution to the on-going debates and policy discussions which are critical for the future, a post-pandemic future, a future which moves the UN Sustainable Development Goals from lip service to action, a future where our climate crisis no longer remains the cry of the few, but the reason for action for the many. We have deliberately sought authors and viewpoints from parts of the world that have seldom been heard in the international literature on higher education and social responsibility. In contrast to books like these that most generally only feature writers from the global North, we have chosen to share the experiences of a broadly representative and globally dispersed set of writers. Importantly we have intentionally chosen to achieve a gender and diversity balance amongst our authors. This book features many younger and emerging scholars.Item Leave no one behind. Repositioning Higher Education for achieving SDGs(UNESCO Chair, 2022-11-05) Vargiu, Andrea; Tandon, Rajesh; Kaul, NiharikaRecent global disruptions connected to financial turbulence, pandemic outbreak, and global political instability up for hybrid warfare put the 2030 Agenda's vision at risk. Higher Education (HE) is central to the 2030 Agenda, but its potential hasn't been fully deployed thus far. A stronger role of HE in tackling the world's most pressing issues is therefore necessary. Which requires the repositioning of HE and the reshaping of its principles and practices. By referring to extensive experience on the ground of the Knowledge for Change Consortium members, and a wide range of contributions from the Global South and the excluded North, this policy brief approaches this need by discussing four interrelated themes: 1. HE for the public good 2. Socially inclusive HE 3. Diversity of epistemologies and knowledge systems 4. Contextual responsiveness and place-based learning This policy brief calls on HE leaders and actors to promote transformations within their institutions and HE systems, using the recommendations to critically reflect and act to reposition HE for achieving the 2030 Agenda.Item Knowledge democracy and diverse epistemologies: Inspired by the book “Socially responsible higher education: International perspectives on knowledge democracy”(UNESCO Chair, 2021) Tandon, Rajesh; Hall, Budd LItem Social responsibility in higher education: An International perspective(UNESCO Chair, 2022-03-06) Tandon, Rajesh; Hall, Budd L; Gauthier, Maéva; Kaul, NiharikaIn this post-pandemic world, it is important to have a new, more inclusive and robust framework of social responsibility in higher education. This brief will highlight key features of socially responsible higher education pertaining to the World High Education Conference (WHEC) themes of Inclusion in Higher Education, Higher Education Governance, Quality and Relevance of Programmes, and the Futures of Higher Education. Key elements include 1) Recognition of diversities of knowledge systems and epistemologies; 2) Integration of teaching, research and engagement missions; 3) Contextually responsive, locally rooted, place based and linguistically plural; 4) Socially inclusive, seeking diversity amongst students and academics; 5) Pluriversality replacing universality; 6) Transcending rankings and 7) Reclaiming the purpose of higher education as a common good. This policy brief, will review these key elements in more detail to advance the prevalent discourse on social responsibility of higher education. This set of principles strengthens a new, more societally oriented, knowledge democracy perspective on social responsibility of higher education. In the emerging aftermath of COVID- 19, such a knowledge democracy perspective is required to re-position and re- align higher education institutions, policies and systems around the world.Item Fostering social responsibility by higher educational institutions: COVID-19 & Beyond-WEBINAR(Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2020-04-08) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA); Association of Indian UniversitiesItem The power of creativity, knowledge and action in knowledge mobilization: Reflections from international work(Canadian Commission for UNESCO, 2020-05) Tandon, Rajesh; Hall, Budd LIn this paper, Dr. Budd Hall and Dr. Rajesh Tandon examine how knowledge mobilization can become a more effective tool for social transformation when it is integrated throughout the research process rather than treated as a final dissemination activity. Drawing on over four decades of community-based participatory research (CBPR) across the global South and excluded North, the authors contend that KMb is most powerful when embedded in research from the outset, rather than added after the fact. Working within a knowledge democracy framework through the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, the paper explores how creative and arts-based methods have served as powerful vehicles for sharing research with communities, policymakers, and the broader public. Through four case studies—domestic workers in India using a hand-stitched saree to document sexual harassment; waste recyclers in Brazil producing participatory videos for policy advocacy; immigrant women in Toronto presenting through spoken word at City Hall; and a community health fair in rural South Africa the paper illustrates how art reaches people and places that conventional academic outputs cannot. The paper concludes that creativity is not decorative in KMb; it is essential, particularly when research aims at social transformation and meaningful community change.Item Commentary on the progress report on the futures of education(UNESCO Chair, 2020-04-24) Tandon, Rajesh; Hall, Budd LItem Introduction social responsibility and community based research in higher education institutions(BRILL, 2021) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshIn this paper, Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon situate higher education at a crossroads shaped by neoliberalism, the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and calls for decolonisation. They trace how the 2009 UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education placed social responsibility at the centre of global debate, and how their own UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education grew out of that moment. The authors set out a knowledge democracy framework built on multiple epistemologies, co-constructed knowledge, and open access to research, then turn to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the political, financial, institutional, and knowledge deficits threatening their achievement by 2030. They close by outlining the book's four sections, on universities as civic space, decolonised curricula, engaged teaching, and new understandings of knowledge and the earth, gathering voices deliberately drawn from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the excluded North rather than the global North alone.Item Learning to Do, Learning to Be, Learning to Learn: Education for tomorrow(2020) Tandon, RajeshThe text discusses the need for sustainable development in modern civilization, education's role in society's economic, social, and environmental challenges, and education's capacity to foster learning to do, learn to be, and learn to know. It highlights HEIs' importance in co-creating and sharing knowledge and expertise to benefit society. In particular, the article describes the relationship between higher education institutions (universities) and the community as two-way communication where the community is considered a partner in education. Furthermore, the text emphasizes the importance of adopting an approach that promotes quality education (SDG 4), as well as education for sustainable development, human rights, gender equality, global citizenship, culture, and active societies (community engagement). In addition, the text promotes universities that are committed to contributing to society that values individuals and encourages them to lead fulfilling lives and become responsible and ethical agents.