Observers know universities to be the most politically sterile of institutions, the indoctrination boot-camps for the military economy's service intellectuals...
That is what makes this such a remarkable news item.
At Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, some professors and some students are using state of the art blog technology to implement direct transparency regarding academic planning.
Who would have imagined that the usual institutional show exercise of periodically dressing the university administration's elite indulgences with vacuous statements about academic integrity, a respectful learning environment, research excellence, and community service could be partly transparent?
Who would have guessed that ass kissing could be steered towards discourse?
We have modern technology and a few brave insiders to thank. Canada is a better place for it.
As a Queen's alumnus, still living in the Kingston-area, this post caught my eye. After reading it and clicking through to the "Real Academic Planning Blog", I'm impressed... although to someone stumbling across it the messaging/purpose is a little confusing. They should have the sort of summary you wrote as their lead post - and maybe tweak the design a bit with the Queens logo or at least get away from the standard Wordpress template - and I bet it would do better in terms of being shared and garnering return visits. Also, I don't see much discourse here but rather the reprinting of articles and emails. Perhaps one of the readily available WP forum plugins would be a helpful addition to foster more dicourse than they're currently enjoying via comments alone? It's a great idea that could benefit from a few small improvements to make it more of a two-way street.
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