Stories of violent conflicts abound in contemporary India. Hardly any day passes when media reports do not capture some form of collective conflict, either between communities or vis-à-vis the state machinery or both. To a casual observer, such persistent conflict may appear to be dangerous for democracy. Quite the contrary, some degree of manifest and vocal conflict is a measure of functioning democracy in society, more so in a society like India which has numerous horizontal and vertical cleavages.

With a vision for a BOLD FUTURE focused on Student Career Success, Dr. Doug Baker was installed as the 12th president of Northern Illinois University on November 13th.

For more on Northern Illinois University's APLU designation as an "Innovation and Economic Prosperity University," please see: http://www.niutoday.info/2013/11/12/a-great-example-of-a-public-universi...

We are very pleased that three books in the series Universities and Lifelong Learning, inspired by the PURE project, and published by Manchester University Press are now available. Details can be found at the MUP website.

Paulo Wangoola is the founding Nabyama or President of the Mpambo Afrikan Multiversity, a higher education research institute for the revitalization and promotion of mother-tongue Afrikan scholarship. Based near the source of the River Nile in Busoga Kingdom of Uganda, Wangoola has been working closely with a team of deep thinkers trained in Indigenous ways of knowing totally outside of western educational schools and systems of thought.