Background documents regarding convening the Global Assembly

I am pleased to see this discussion forum. As the energy for Cartagena builds, it is good to get some flow of information on the Global Assembly in particular. I have attached a few background pieces that may contribute to the conversations before and during the event itself. Some of these are historic pieces, dating back to the first 1977 Cartagena conference, others are more recent pieces that Rajesh Tandon and I have done more recently. Please take a look at www.unescochair-cbrsr.org in the resources section for many more materials. Readers will find 5-6 of our studies on knowledge democracy downloadable on that site as well as the 557 page World Report on Higher Education6: Towards a Socially Responsible University-Balancing the Global and the Local

Dear Budd - good to read your contribution. I appreciated hearing your address when you asked yourself the following questions:

Some questions for myself
1. How do I ‘decolonize’, ‘deracialise,’ demasculanise and degender my inherited ‘intellectual spaces?’i
2. How do I support the opening up of spaces for the flowering of epistemologies, ontologies, theories, methodologies, objects and questions other than those that have long been hegemonic, and that have exercised dominance over (perhaps have even suffocated) intellectual and scholarly thought and writing?
3. How do I contribute to the building of new academic cultures and, more widely, new inclusive institutional cultures that genuinely respect and appreciate difference and diversity – whether class, gender, national, linguistic, religious, sexual orientation, epistemological or methodological in nature?
4. How do I become a part of creating the new architecture of knowledge that allows co- construction of knowledge between intellectuals in academia and intellectuals located in community settings?

I'm looking forward to hearing your answers - no matter how embryonic.

Hi
As a professor from the North, albeit from the semi-periphery since I am francophone, I agree with your questions and I have a first immediate answer : to publish in open access and under a Creative Commons licence, whether this is an article or slides, and to refuse completely to give any money to the for-profit, so-called scientific publishers... I also try to experiment new forms of scientific writing, plurilingual, very personal, including body and emotions. I attach such a paper (in french) called : Haitian mediation : responding to the separating violence of positivist epistemology with an epistemology of relation.

Thank you so much Budd for sharing these documents, they will be helpful references for the conversation.

Dr. José M. Ramos
pub: https://usc-au.academia.edu/joseramos
linkedin: http://linkd.in/19h1V5h
web: http://actionforesight.net
tel: +(61)431-541-068

Thank you Budd, these are immensely helpful for myself and colleagues who are tasked with "transformation of the curriculum" in HE in South Africa. I am encouraged by the fact that you were arguing the same way in 1975 and yet little has changed, but today the arguments are coming to the fore again, so we must never give up our ideals. Decolonisation is the buzz word just now in SA, but few academics seem to be able to articulate what it means or know how to begin in their own subjects/disciplines (it also does not help that 75% of the professoriat are white, and mostly male). These articles will enable us to begin to grapple with ideas. For example, in my own institution (which is traditionally one of the most conservative) an institutional committee has been set up to deal with transformation of the curriculum, yet it seems to me that some members of this committee are more intent on maintaining the status quo and defending their territories - the questions in the PRA and HE article provide a good starting point for conversations to move past the impasses created by entrenched ideas. Thank you.

Wonderful to hear from Lesley regarding this concrete example of how the past work on knowledge democracy links so emphatically with the present. Very best wishes in the struggle with decolonisation in South Africa.

Thanks, Jack, for framing up these four essential questions based on Budd's sharing. These four could well become a kind of "personal, professional, and political guide" for ARNA's Global Assembly Strategic Initiative. Much more to say on this and will add in the days and weeks to come.

Lonnie

Dear Jack,
very nice to hear views and thanks for the four questions that you posed for guidance. I am sure these questions make the commenters to be very focused on the areas and talk about how can we play our role to fight against injustices with intellectual ways of engagement rather emotional ways of reactions.

I guess, I am also playing my one of the roles in empowering my learners/students at masters and M. Phil level to challenge taken for granted views, practices, perceptions, and beliefs and come with their own ways of meaning making for creating a space to raise their voice against injustices of many kinds.

Probably, my role as a teacher educator can make a difference in the lives of students who have been accustomed to assimilate information from teachers, leaders of all kinds and elders without critically reflecting on their views. Perhaps, providing an opportunity to the people especially students at school, college and university level to engage with critical thinking will help them to transform self/beyond.

In this way we can enable them to become a critically reflective practitioners who would play their key role in their societies to transform...

Dear Florence - I’m looking forward to meeting you in Cartagena and learning more about Haitian mediation and especially about an epistemology of relation.