Socially Responsible Higher Education
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Item A reflective book review-Challenging the professionalization of adult Education: John ohliger and contradictions in modern practice(2010) Hall, Budd LDr. Budd Hall's reflective review of Challenging the Professionalization of Adult Education (Grace & Rocco) examines the intellectual and political legacy of John Ohliger, who spent decades working outside the academy to defend adult education's democratic roots. Drawing on personal encounters and shared political work, Hall traces how Ohliger pushed back against the professionalization and marketization of adult learning, highlighting commitment to voluntary, community-based, and socially engaged education. The review connects Ohliger's thought to participatory research and popular education, arguing that his critique of compulsory, market-driven approaches remain relevant to contemporary adult education and social change. Hall ultimately presents Ohliger as a public intellectual whose work continues to inspire efforts to preserve the democratic and transformative potential of the field.Item Adult education, culture development and social movements: The contemporary challenge( Society for Participatory Research In Asia (PRIA), 1993-04-27) Tandon, RajeshThis article by Dr. Rajesh Tandon examines the challenges in adult education amidst the context of global cultural homogenization, social movements, and development, and highlights the importance of cultural identity in social transformation. Dr. Tandon describes the current global scenario as unipolar in nature, with a rise in global media that has led to the homogenization of culture and destruction of indigenous knowledge systems throughout the world, resulting in growing alienation of individuals, families, and communities. In this context, the article describes a craving within people and communities for their historical roots and identities. It also identifies a neglect in social movements since World War II, which focused primarily on economic and political issues instead of cultural dimensions of oppression and addresses the rise of new social movements in the past few decades for closure of this gap. The article concludes by linking the role of education with sustaining cultural identities urging adult educators to bring the issue of culture into development discourse.Item Bridging the gap between the researcher and the community: PRIA’s engagements in promoting community based research and social responsibility in higher educational institutions(Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2014) Tandon, Rajesh; Singh, Wafa; Srinivasan, SumitraPRIA has engaged with academia in a multitude of interventions, bringing community and practitioner knowledge into the portals of traditional research institutions and processes. By doing this, PRIA has helped Higher Educational Institutions (HEls) realize their social responsibility towards a community's needs and aspirations. This document traces PRIA's work in promoting community engagement within HEls in India and beyond. The experience, garnered over three decades, have been classified into six categories to highlight the different forms PRIA's interventions as a facilitator have taken to build bridges between the world of formal research, the practitioner knowledge of civil society actors and the experiential knowledge of local communities. The experiences discussed in this paper are not intended to be comprehensive; a few specific interventions are described under each category to illustrate the nature of the engagements fostered and the practices promoted.Item Building a global learning network: The international council for adult education(International Council for Adult Education, 0000) Hall, Budd LWhat can we learn from the histories, tasks, and challenges of building global cooperation in adult education? In this chapter, Dr. Budd L Hall reflects on the emergence and significance of the International Council for Adult Education as a key step in strengthening international collaboration in adult learning. He traces its historical roots in post war movements for literacy, liberation, and development, and situates its formation within broader struggles for democratic participation and social justice. The chapter outlines ICAE’s early tasks, including building regional networks, amplifying voices from the Global South, and shaping global policy debates in partnership with bodies such as UNESCO. Hall also discusses internal tensions, funding constraints, and the political challenges of sustaining an independent global civil society network. By examining questions of direction, alliances, and accountability, he invites readers to reflect on how global networks can remain responsive to changing contexts while staying grounded in their transformative commitments.Item Commentary on the progress report on the futures of education(UNESCO Chair, 2020-04-24) Tandon, Rajesh; Hall, Budd LItem Community based participatory research & sustainable development goals(the Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s IdeaLab, 2017) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshIn this report, Dr. Budd Hall and Dr. Rajesh Tandon explore the role of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The authors contend that addressing the social, economic, and environmental challenges within the SDG framework demands knowledge production approaches that go beyond what conventional academic research offers. Higher education institutions, with their considerable intellectual, physical, and digital resources, are seen as well-placed to generate locally relevant and actionable knowledge through socially responsible research. CBPR is discussed as a collaborative and participatory approach that brings together universities, communities, civil society, and policy actors in equitable partnerships, with an emphasis on co-learning, capacity building, and social change. The report also considers how higher education institutions can integrate CBPR into their research work through locally grounded and community-driven methods. It closes with recommendations for universities, policymakers, funding agencies, and civil society organizations on building stronger institutional support for CBPR in the pursuit of the SDGs.Item Community engagement in higher education institutions: Status report 2015(UNESCO Chair, 2015-04) Tandon, Rajesh; Singh, WafaItem Curriculum, higher education, and the public good(2009) Hall, Budd L; Bhatt, Nandita; Lepore, WalterCurriculum change in higher education is an extremely complex process. Influences on the content of what is taught in higher education include new knowledge coming from the various academic disciplines, from the regulatory bodies of many of the professions, from national calls for action, from global challenges, from social movements of the day. This chapter argues that in the search for excellence, engagement and social responsibility that there is no contradiction between responding to local calls for action and global matters. Illustrations of curriculum change which attend to both the local and the global include classroom changes, single university changes, system-wide changes in Canada, Asia, Latin America and New Zealand. We call for more attention to community engaged learning and the creation of central offices for community university engagement.Item Diversity & social inclusion in higher education: Reflections from FICCI HES 2017(UNESCO Chair, 2018-01-01) UNESCO ChairThis report from the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education reflects on a FICCI HES 2017 session on diversity and inclusion in Indian higher education. It opens with the scale of the Indian system, nearly 800 universities and forty million students, still marked by uneven access along lines of class, gender, disability, and language. Drawing on speakers including Budd Hall, Darren Lortan, and Rajesh Tandon, it moves through the University of Victoria's indigenization efforts, South Africa's unfinished decolonization of higher education, and arguments that a uniform national curriculum alienates students from their local contexts and knowledge systems. The report treats diversity as reaching beyond enrolment numbers into curricula, pedagogy, and institutional structure and closes by proposing directions for Indian HEIs: mainstreaming marginalised populations, transforming pedagogy, restructuring institutions, and revising curricula to become contextual, framed as necessary to sustaining democratic values through education.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 India launch of the UNESCO Chair in community-based research and social responsibility in higher education(UNESCO Chair, 2012-12) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshItem India launch of UNESCO Chair and symposium on “Fostering Social Responsibility in Higher Education”(Jamia Millia Islamia & Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2012-12-10) Jamia Millia Islamia; Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)This report is about the India launch of the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, held on December 10, 2012 at Jamia Millia Islamia in collaboration with PRIA. It covers the background to the Chair, co-founded by Rajesh Tandon and Budd Hall, and its place within India's 12th Five Year Plan push for community-university engagement. The report outlines PRIA's long history as a bridging institution between academia and communities, and lists six illustrative forms of engagement, from linking research with community knowledge to including practitioners as teachers. It then summarises the launch event itself, held in two sessions. The first marked the formal opening of the Chair, with speeches from Budd Hall, Rajesh Tandon, JMI's Vice-Chancellor and other dignitaries. The second being a panel discussion on fostering social responsibility in higher education in India.Item International Adult Education(2016) Hall, Budd LIn this article, Dr. Budd Hall examines the history, contemporary challenges, and international dimensions of adult education. Tracing its origins to nineteenth-century social reform, labour, and popular education movements, the article highlights the transnational exchange of ideas and practices that shaped adult education initiatives across industrialized and developing societies. It examines adult learning within the context of globalization, emphasizing its contested role in addressing inequality, fostering democratic participation, and supporting social transformation. The article also discusses the significance of international conferences and organizations, particularly UNESCO and the International Council for Adult Education, in advancing global adult learning. It identifies key trends in international adult education, including divergent policy approaches between wealthy and developing nations, the emergence of learning spaces beyond formal institutions, and the declining visibility of adult education within international development agendas. Despite these challenges, the article affirms adult education's continuing relevance as a site of learning, advocacy, and social transformation.Item International collaboration for changing the culture of research: The UNESCO Chair in community-based research and social responsibility in higher education(Autonomie Locali e Servizi Sociali, 2020-04-01) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshThis paper traces the development of the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, established through the long-standing collaboration of Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon. It explains how the Chair promotes community-based participatory research by strengthening partnerships between universities, civil society organizations, and local communities across the Global South and the excluded North. This work includes global studies, open-access publications, international networks, and the K4C Consortium. Engaged research also supports the SDGs by fostering knowledge co-creation and socially responsible, locally grounded higher education. The paper argues that transforming research culture demands collaboration, knowledge democracy, and closer academia-community links to tackle social and environmental challenges.Item 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 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 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 Making the commitment: Contributions of higher education to SDGs(Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2017-09) Tandon, RajeshIn this paper, Dr Rajesh Tandon looks at the role Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) can play in advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He points out that political support, resources, and institutional capacity all matter, but the sharpest gap is one of knowledge. Hereby, he posits engaged teaching, research, and service as best placed to close it. HEIs, he argues, carry vast physical and intellectual resources, often underused, and can catalyze societal transformation once social responsibility is built into all three core missions across every discipline, not confined to a few departments. The paper works through practical strategies: revising curricula, building community-based research partnerships, and reframing service as mutual empowerment rather than charity. It closes with a call for systemic reform and collaboration among HEIs, government, civil society, and international networks to build an enabling ecosystem. Reimagined this way, HEIs move beyond traditional paradigms to become key drivers of the SDGs, fulfilling higher education's potential as a public good.Item Participatory research-Popular knowledge and power(1984-09) Hall, Budd LThis article includes two chapters about the concepts of knowledge and creation of a monopoly over social science research along with offering an alternative in the form of participatory research. The first chapter discusses knowledge within the context of economic failure and the role of universities in the new international order. It talks about the commodification of knowledge which has facilitated capitalist dependency and an uneven development in third world countries. It further discusses the monopoly created over knowledge by a small group of elites to serve their own interests. Indigenous education around the world appears to be absent from the universal body of knowledge. The paper then discusses in detail about how research and social scientists are being used by institutions to impose bureaucratic and ideological control. It criticises the traditional research methods and opens discussion on an alternative methodology, in the form of participatory research. The next chapter further explores the concept of participatory research, its origin, and its characteristics. It talks about the importance of popular forms of knowledge and how it is linked with social transformation. It emphasizes the need for participatory research processes to be working within the frameworks of social movements. The chapter concludes with presenting some points to shape the future of participatory research.