Dear Friends,

Rajesh reminds us that October 2 was Mahatma Gandhi's birthday.  By chance I was in Memphis, Tennessee that day visiting the US civil rights museum located at the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.  He was of course a strong advocate of non-violent civil disobedience.  Important to be reminded of the sheer hard work, risk and long term determination that democratic social justice struggles require.

We hope that your projects and engagements are continuing to unfold and that you are all, as the US civil rights movements tells us, 'Keeping your eyes on the prize'

Rajesh Tandon and Budd Hall
Co-Chairs
UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility of Higher Education

Please contribute to the global discussion on Community Engagement and Rankings!

Within our 'Big Tent' dialogues, meetings of our networks and amongst ourselves we have been having discussions about the corrosive nature of the global higher education 'league tables'.  Perhaps my characterization is too strong, but we have much anecdotal information about how the rankings 'game' has or is distorting the way that higher education is being understood and evaluated.  Issues of social responsibility, knowledge democracy, engagement are moved aside in favour of other criteria.  On the advice of many of you, we agreed at the last GACER meeting in Bonn in May of 2012 to support a global dialogue on rankings and community engagement.  PASCAL under the leadership of Dr. Hans Schutze, one of the top comparative higher education scholars in the world agree to lead this discussion. Hans has done a great job creating an opening statement but it will not be useful unless we get contributions from many of you who are in leadership positions.

We need your contributions to the blog space that PASCAL has created.   If we get a robust response and some ideas about how to move forward to counter, augment or create alternative approaches, we will take it up at the GUNI International Barcelona Conference on Higher Education May 13-15 in Barcelona.

PASCAL featured in 'Best of the Web' listings in Guardian Higher Education Network newsletter

PASCAL is featured in the 'Best of the Web' listings in this week’s Guardian Higher Education Network newsletter, linking Hans Schuetzes blog  Community Engagement and University Rankings. 

Click the image below or use this shortlink: http://bit.ly/SpNOAt

US National Outreach Scholarship Conference a success

The 13th National Outreach Scholarship Conference finishes today at the University of Alabama.  The theme of the conference was "Higher Education and Communities are learning to partner in innovative ways so that together they inspire scholarship that will one day change the world".  From an awe-inspiring motivational opening speech from the Dr. James Joseph, former US Ambassador to South Africa on "The Civic Engagement Imperative: Higher Education and the Public Good", through a panel of University Presidents speaking out in support of the engagement message to scores of community-led social movement/justice partnership projects, the hallways were filled with over 600 community and university folks with a passion for making a difference. We will try to get a copy of the Joseph speech for all of us. We were there drawing attention to our global networks and to the global movement of engagement and higher education.

A good reminder for those of us who are from outside of the USA and often see such dark portraits of life in the US in the media, that the spirit of progressive social change which has historically been so powerful amongst many in that part of the world is still very much alive and well.

07 September 2012 

Knowledge sharing networks are increasingly recognised as means of mobilising the knowledge and capacities needed to respond to complex and changing realities, such as the challenges posed by climate change.

While there is an ever growing literature about the art and science of managing networks and the relationships within networks, there is relatively little work that looks at the behind the scenes at the dynamics between those trying to deliver and implement these networks.

AfricaAdapt is one such knowledge network that describes its aim as 'facilitating the flow of climate change adaptation knowledge for sustainable livelihoods between researchers, policy makers, civil society organisations and communities who are vulnerable to climate variability and change across the [African] continent'.