Happy New Year! I hope you all had a good break and are starting 2013 with renewed energy and fresh resolve.

Later this week, I'll be speaking in Vancouver at the Sixth World Universities Forum.  

My presentation, From Ivory Tower to Public Square: Democracy and the Engaged University, focuses on the role of universities in fostering a more vibrant democracy.

My thesis is this: Given the decline in voter participation rates and the associated democratic malaise affecting Canada and other Western countries, it appears increasingly obvious that our current forms of representative democracy are insufficient.

We must find more and better ways to engage citizens in deliberation and decision-making on issues affecting their lives and communities.

Many theorists are calling for such a shift.

They argue that deeper, more deliberative structures that engage citizens more frequently and effectively are the route to what Benjamin Barber calls “strong democracy.”

I find the arguments persuasive, and I believe that universities – and especially “engaged” universities – have a great deal to contribute to this effort.

The SFU experience shows that engaged universities can:

• provide students with direct educational opportunities that allow them to grapple with socially significant issues and, in the process, to acquire the knowledge, skills and competencies they'll need as future global citizens;
  
• use research strengths to equip communities with the capacities and structures they require to resolve major policy challenges;
• leverage the institutions’ intellectual, programmatic and physical resources to enrich public understanding and promote dialogue and deliberation on important issues of the day.

In order to support the strengthening of democracy in these and other ways, universities need to think of themselves less as ivory towers, designed to contain knowledge within their bastions, and more as public squares, with mandates to exchange knowledge and build capacity within the broader communities they serve.  

Some in academia might worry that such a shift could threaten universities’ traditional autonomy and neutrality. I believe the opposite is true. 

Broadening public engagement is likely to make universities less partial in their perspectives; and the public support that universities derive from such engagement should make it easier for them to withstand external pressures placed upon them.

By helping to strengthen democracy, engaged universities also help to strengthen their own positions within society, while simultaneously safeguarding the values they hold dear.

I don’t expect everyone at the World Universities Forum to agree with me on this, but I hope at minimum to provoke some worthwhile discussion and serious thinking.