ENGAGED GRADUATE EDUCATION: SEEING WITH NEW EYES
by James L. Applegate

VISION, PASSION, ACTION
The change I advocate has three parts. First, we must develop a substantive vision for how each of the disciplines can best engage the needs of students and society. This will require fundamental rethinking of our teaching and research activities. I will address this issue in more detail later.

Second, we need to develop a passion about the vision we will pursue. I know that passion is a term that sits uncomfortably with academics. Typically, we think of ourselves as dispassionate critics, walled within the ideology of objectivism. We see our role as generating knowledge and transmitting that knowledge in the classroom. However, a vision without passion is the worst form of bureaucratic spirit. At best, it is what we often call a strategic plan. At worst, it is simply a set of strategies to help us achieve personal or group success. On the other hand, passion without thoughtful vision invites demagoguery. We certainly see enough of that in politics and even inside of academia. As academics, we are in a unique position to blend vision and passion to better realize what the German philosopher Habermas called the “ideal communicative context” in which, “the gentle force of the better idea will prevail.” We can ensure that better ideas will prevail in public discourse because of their “betterness,” that is, their superior quality, not because they are advocated by those who are most powerful, tenured, or supported by the largest sums of money. As scholars and critics we can bring to the table a unique form of “passionate rationality” that encourages reflective action driven by the gentle force of the better idea.

In addition to vision and passion, we must commit to action and to the courage to fail publicly. The research and teaching that we should do requires public engagement and public accountability. The traditional academic environment is structured to keep most of our failures relatively private. If we fail in the classroom, only we, our students, and perhaps our department chair are aware of that failure. If we fail to publish our research, notice of the failure typically comes in a private letter from an editor based on an anonymous review.
If we are to develop an engaged agenda for our work, we must have the courage to fail publicly. If we accept millions of dollars in grant funds, for example, to do the necessary research to create an effective public health campaign designed to reduce the number of young people using drugs, and our first efforts fail, the world will know. If, for example, we engage our expertise as public intellectuals to help our communities manage sustainable growth or better accommodate an increasingly diverse population and these programs fail, the community will know. We will fail, we will learn, and we will eventually succeed, but we must have the courage to take this risk. If we do work that matters, not doing it successfully also will matter.

We must help future colleagues develop their own vision for how to assume the stage as engaged public intellectuals with their research and teaching. We must encourage them to develop a passion about their work that will sustain a lifelong commitment, and we must help them develop the courage to act and to fail publicly if that is what it takes to serve the public. This is a very new agenda for preparing future faculty programs.