Higher education-community-industry engagement: Forging meaningful partnerships across ASEAN & Asia

Abstract

Dr. Rajesh Tandon delivered this keynote at AsiaEngage's 2012 regional conference on higher education, community and industry partnerships across ASEAN and Asia. He opens by describing how interconnected the world has become, pointing to Europe's stagnant economies, rising inequality, and ecological strain across Asia. From there, he turns to knowledge production, framing it as a space full of both promise and conflict. He says universities have long treated themselves as the only real producers of knowledge, pushing aside indigenous, intuitive and community-based ways of knowing. Partnerships with communities are not easy. They carry old histories of exclusion and mistrust and need what he calls bridging leadership to work. He points to Europe's science shop movement as one model and announces UNESCO's new chair on community-based research, co-led with Budd Hall. He closes with a story from his own dissertation fieldwork, where a village elder challenges his narrow idea of data.