v. 1. De la Renaștere la epoca "Luminilor".

Mental health issues are on the rise among early career researchers (ECRs), endangering the future of academia. Horizontal linkages among ECRs can play a role in building a reliable emotional support system. We offer four suggestions to overcome existing barriers and foster these linkages.

The paper shows the history of the Academia Electronica – a virtual department of the Jagiellonian University, which has been in operation since 2007 in Second Life 3D graphic environment. The contributor focused on the transformation it underwent and problems which have been addressed for 14 years. Three aspects of the analysis have been identified with the first one concerning the philosophy of virtuality, the second – teaching in the 3D graphic environment, and the third one revealing the social (...) importance of an open university. This text is autobiographic, which means that it includes short memories on a number of events related to the development of the Academia Electronica as a university alongside the contributor’s personal reflections based on his long staying in the Second Life world. (shrink)

Given the significant transformations underway in academia, it is pertinent to ask whether the traditional notion of entering the profession in response to a calling is still relevant. This article draws together hitherto unconnected strands of German and Anglo-Saxon literature on callings, then analyzes biographical narratives of 40 social scientists in Germany and the United States. The comparative analysis of the timing, sources, and nature of the respondents’ decision to become academics finds that almost all exhibit a calling orientation. (...) However, their responses no longer correspond to the classical, passive notion; instead, callings in academia have become agentic. In the context of a wider societal trend to self-realization, academia has been transformed to an activity that people pursue because they want to rather than because destiny or an external force pushes them to make such a commitment. The recognition of the social nature of callings is underscored by the significance of professional mentors and family. The unexpected predominance of similarities in the cross-national comparison of calling orientation suggests that the internationalization of academic standards and procedures and the high level of competition for few positions in both contexts may outweigh the effects of culture and tradition. (shrink)

Strong forces lead to a withering of academia as it exists today. The major causal forces are the rankings mania, increased division of labor in research, intense publication pressure, academic fraud, dilution of the concept of ‘university’, and inadequate organizational forms for modern research. Academia, in a broader sense understood as ‘the locus of seeking truth and learning through methodological inquiry’, will subsist in different forms. The conclusion is therefore pessimistic with respect to the academic system as it (...) presently exists but not to scholarly endeavour as such. However, the transformation predicted is expected to be fundamental. (shrink)

Casual conversations between faculty members in places like faculty lounges and collaborative events are essential for sharing knowledge, working together, and building a sense of community within academic institutions. Social Network Analysis (SNA) of informal professor communications plays a vital role in fostering students’ ethical competence and critical skills development. It identifies influential nodes that shape the ethical discourse, to promote independent thinking and valid ethical principles, preparing students for real-world challenges. In the contemporary landscape of academia, fostering ethical (...) competence among professors is a paramount objective. Ethical dilemmas often permeate scholarly pursuits, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of ethical principles and effective communication channels for their dissemination. This study proposes an innovative approach to address this imperative: employing SNA to examine informal communication patterns among professors within academic institutions in a collaborative manner. By leveraging SNA, this research aims to elucidate the intricate web of informal interactions among faculty members and identify central figures or clusters that influence ethical discourse within academic circles. Through a mixed-methods approach integrating quantitative metrics and qualitative insights, the study seeks to uncover hidden dynamics, influential nodes, and information flow patterns within the social fabric of academia. By elucidating the informal networks through which ethical norms and values are transmitted, institutions can develop targeted interventions to enhance ethical competence among faculty members. (shrink)

An extensive literature has focused on the impact of new public management oriented structural changes on academics’ practice and identity. These critical studies have been resolute in concluding that NPM inevitably leads to a degeneration of academics’ ethos and values. Drawing from the moral philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, we argue that these previous analyses have overlooked the moral agency of the academics and their role in ‘moralizing’ and consequently shaping the ethical nature of their practices. The paper provides a new (...) theoretical understanding of NPM-oriented reforms in light of the virtue ethics approach, thereby directing the attention to the moral character and moral agency of academics. Our analysis of interviews collected in the business department of a Danish university provides an example of how individuals have divergent ethical understandings of these structural changes and enact/resist pre-defined social roles in different ways. While in some cases the NPM agenda of the institutions has triggered internal moral conflict and a crisis of moral character, in other cases the new logic resonates with academics’ values and evaluative standards. Partially departing from the theoretical ground of MacIntyre, we conclude that academics can play a crucial role in shaping the morality of NPM-oriented institutions and in transforming these settings into suitable contexts for the cultivation of virtues. (shrink)

Ian C. Jarvie’s original research was on cargo cults—more specifically regarding the anthropologists who study cargo cults as themselves constituting a cargo cult. I reflect on the broader epistemological significance of this work, extending it to what I call ‘academic expressivism’, whereby contemporary identity politics is analysed as a cargo cult that relies on a superstitious attachment to sociological categories such as race, class, and gender. Special attention is given to the academic expressivist redeployment of Robert Nozick’s entitlement theory of (...) justice as a vehicle for promoting identity politics. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest that the ethical duties of business schools can be understood as representing stewardship in the Aristotelian tradition. In Introduction section we briefly explain the nature of ethical stewardship as a moral guideline for organizations in examining their duties to society. Ethical Stewardship section presents six ethical duties of business schools that are owed to four distinct stakeholders, and includes examples of each of those duties. Utilizing this Framework section identifies how this framework of duties can (...) be used in the process of self-examination and transformation within business schools. Why It Matters section concludes by explaining why the process of examining ethical duties at business schools is vitally important for both business schools and the larger communities that they serve. (shrink)

Author Marc James Léger responds to Elias Khoury’s review of his book _Bernie Bros Gone Woke: Class, Identity, Neoliberalism_, which was published in volume 17 of the _International Journal of __Žižek Studies_. While Léger accepts the one mistake in the book that Khoury correctly identifies, he takes issue with nearly everything else in Khoury’s review, which involves fallacies, misquotations, reductive arguments, misdirection and failure to mention anything that would contradict Khoury’s generally false claims. Léger describes the possibility of academic foul (...) play in the context of a public secret directed against him and that he has been struggling against since the late 1990s. (shrink)

O que se segue é o conjunto de considerações a respeito das denominações que a Nova Academia recebeu ao longo da história da filosofia. Essa escola ficou conhecida como Academia cética, ao mesmo tempo em que uma das principais concepções que se formou a seu respeito é a de que ela defendia a tese de que nada pode ser conhecido, ou seja, a posição de um dogmatismo negativo. Apesar dessas terminologias não terem sido empregadas em seu próprio período, (...) podemos dizer que o modo como essa filosofia foi interpretada por seus contemporâneos correspondia ao que posteriormente denominamos por esses termos. Atualmente, é comum a interpretação da recusa da possibilidade conhecimento como um tipo de ceticismo. No entanto, quando falamos do ceticismo antigo e do que entendemos sobre ceticismo enquanto uma escola filosófica, essas interpretações são essencialmente opostas. Meu objetivo será indicar os principais motivos que levaram à atribuição de ambas as denominações e indicar as razões que me levam a negar o dogmatismo negativo e a interpretá-la como um ceticismo. (shrink)

Purpose The high rate of internet penetration has led to the proliferation of social media use, even at the workplace, including academia. This research attempts to develop a topology and thereby determine the dominant use motive for faculty’s use of SM. Design/methodology/approach In this two-part study, a two-stage research design has been adopted for topology development based on the application of Uses and Gratifications Theory. In the second part, the Technology Acceptance Model is applied to discern the dominant motive (...) for SM use in academia. Findings The work is able to develop a seven-item topology, conforming to the basic three use motives, namely, hedonic, utilitarian and social. The work shows faculty attach more value to the instrumental utility of SM, while the hedonic function is also significant. Practical implications Discerning dominant motive implies that SM use at the workplace should not be banned, rather effective regulated use will instil the faculty to enhance work outcomes. The conceptualisation of topology for SM use in academia at the workplace can aid in designing an effective organisation policy, and design of an internal SM platform. Originality/value The study is unique towards topology development for academic faculty and has many important implications for management and academia, especially towards policy design for SM use at the workplace. (shrink)

Recently, a few of scientific journals raise serious questions about scientific ethics and moral judgment of some of the Iranian government’s senior executives in their papers. Plagiarism, under any circumstances is not justified, and we do not intend to justify it in this note. However, we find it useful in understanding why otherwise respected, responsible individuals may engage in plagiarism by terse review of the history Iranian academia.

The term “critical thinking” is barely a century old; and it is controversial, fraught with ambiguity, and often treated as an academic orphan, condemned to the margins of scholarly culture. Despite its “royal” ancestry, as the embodiment of rationality inherited from Ancient Greece, it has come to represent an isolated and sectarian field of inquiry. But philosophers would be wise to take due credit for their offspring rather than shun or disavow critical thinking; and other scholars should recognize it as (...) their shared legacy from philosophy, and the embodiment of intellectual rigor. (shrink)

Scientific research is usually presented as the driver that provides progress and meaning to the academic ecosystem. Higher education on the other hand, is typically imagined as something that naturally follows scientific research. In the academic ecosystem, education often retains a more marginalized position than scientific research and in many of the predominant accounts of the academic ecosystem it is even neglected. As a result, higher education and teaching tends to be treated as duty work that retracts resources away from (...) research. In response to such accounts the present article proposes an alternative perspective in which higher education can assume a proactive role that affects institutions’ research. The article presents a case that demonstrates how social scientists at the Technical University of Denmark, in response to new demands for autonomous economy within Danish universities, invented the controversial, yet successful, ‘Design and Innovation’ engineering program. Design and Innovation’s controversial curricular composition brought together: creativity, social awareness, and product innovation and heralded the salvation for the declining status of engineering in Danish higher education. The article contributes to contemporary discussions on transformations within the university system by illustrating educational development as a transformative practice whereby the value and purpose of scientific disciplines get rearticulated in conversation with contemporary understandings of social needs. (shrink)

Boundary crossings in academia are rarely addressed by university policy despite the risk of problematic or unethical faculty - student interactions. This study contributes to an understanding of undergraduate college student perceptions of appropriateness of faculty - student nonsexual interactions by investigating the influence of gender and ethnicity on student judgments of the appropriateness of numerous hypothetical interactions. Overall, students deemed the majority of interactions as inappropriate. Female students judged a number of interactions as more inappropriate than did male (...) students, and with a few exceptions, Mexican American and Anglo American students were similar in their ratings of the appropriateness of faculty - student interactions. These findings suggest that universities need to be proactive in establishing guidelines concerning faculty-student boundary crossings. (shrink)

As a presumed bastion of the Enlightenment values that support a critical intelligentsia, the university is often regarded as both the bedrock and beneficiary of liberal democracy. By contrast, authoritarian regimes are said to discourage higher education out of fear that the growth of a critical intelligentsia could imperil their survival. The case of China, past and present, challenges this conventional wisdom. Imperial China, the most enduring authoritarian political system in world history, thrived in large part precisely because of its (...) sponsorship of a form of higher education closely tied to state interests. Although twentieth-century revolutions brought fundamental change to Chinese politics and pedagogy, the contemporary party-state also actively promotes higher education, cultivating a mutually advantageous state-scholar nexus and thereby reducing the likelihood of intellectual-led opposition. As in the imperial past, authoritarian rule in China today is buttressed by a pattern of educated acquiescence, with academia acceding to political compliance in exchange for the many benefits conferred upon it by the state. The role of educated acquiescence in enabling Chinese authoritarianism highlights the contributions of a cooperative academy to authoritarian durability and raises questions with prevailing assumptions that associate the flourishing of higher education with liberal democracy. (shrink)

[ https://plus.google.com/108060242686103906748/posts/cwvdB6mK3J6 ] The phenomenal description on own thoughts regard me to describe Coleridge, along with William Wordsworth, was instrumental in initiating a poetic revolution in the early nineteenth century which is known as the Romantic Movement. Coleridge invokes the Divine Spirit that blows upon the wild Harp of Time. Time is like the stringed musical instrument on which the Spirit produces sweet harmonious melodies. Coleridge is perhaps best known for his haunting ballad Rime of Ancient Mariner, the dream-like Kubla (...) Khan and the unfinished Christabel, but he wrote several other smaller poems, quite remarkable for their imaginative power. (Edited with own analysis)…[http://philpapers.org/profile/112741] http://www.academia.edu/18834746/LITERATURE_I_DO-_THE_ROMANTICS_AND_SUBJECTIVITY_SAMUEL_TAYLOR_COLERIDGE. (shrink)

With numerous, and at times, competing demands placed on the academic, what can be done in order to remain well and healthy? Nurturing Wellbeing in Academia by Poppy Gibson is a how-to guide which...

Les travailleurs·euses de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche vont mal. Souvent, du moins. Au menu de cette souffrance : précarité, productivisme acharné, solitude, compétition… Cette situation concerne le milieu universitaire bien au-delà des frontières françaises, comme le démontre l’analyse sociologique internationale résumée dans cet article. Quitter la fac ou pas?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:130 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Laura Bisaillon, Alana Cattapan, Annelieke Driessen, Esther van Duin, Shannon Spruit, Lorena Anton, and Nancy S. Jecker Doing Academia Differently: “I Needed Self-Help Less Than I Needed a Fair Society” A great deal of harm is being done by belief in the virtuousness of work. — Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness” We are committed to (...) doing academia in particular ways, and not in others. — Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective I had decided that becoming a university professor might be a good fit; friends and colleagues had suggested that I would be valuable to a university, so I prepared for a restructuring of my family life.1 I read Tokarczyk and Fay’s Working-Class Women in the Academy and Babcock and Laschever’s Women Don’t Ask to gather understandings of the milieu I was entering. I now see that my preparations had not shined sufficient light on the social and structural factors that organize the contemporary university.... As it turns out, the restructuring of our lives within the working conditions, priorities, and rationalities of this professional milieu triggered unanticipated and painful effects.... Had Mountz published her article “Women on the Edge” before I decided on a career migration into the university system and, had I been fortunate enough to discover it, I would have made other career choices.2 1. The authors, who describe themselves as the Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective, indicate their personal narratives in this text using italics. 2. Michelle M. Tokarczyk and Elizabeth A. Fay, eds., Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993); Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Bisaillon et al. 131 Introduction: Personal, Professional, and Political We are seven women who met at the Brocher Foundation in Hermance, Switzerland, in July 2017, where we had been selected to spend a few months as research fellows. This competitively awarded opportunity is open to persons fluent in English, from graduate students to senior scholars, with or without academic appointment, whose scholarship advances knowledge about the ethical, legal, and social implications of health and biotechnologies.3 When we found ourselves on the shores of Lake Leman with the gift of time, we began opening up to each other in unexpected, compelling ways. Whatever our vantage point in the hierarchy of the university system, we discovered that there was remarkable overlap in our experiences as women in academia. When we began writing, our authoring team was composed of two graduate students, four faculty members at the assistant professor rank, and one full professor, residing in Canada, the Netherlands, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our plural subject position led us to underexplored and imaginative responses to broader social issues, which we share in this article as the “Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective.” We analyze our experiences from our standpoint as women health researchers laboring in the academy. Our similarities and differences were exciting entry points for discussion and analysis: we are all of eastern or western European descent. We have different countries of birth, mother tongues, ages, disciplinary training and career trajectories, relationships to chronic illness and disability, marital status, and experiences with parenthood. We bring the troubles and contradictions we experience as academics into conversation with each other. We seek to productively illustrate and emphasize that the tensions we see around us, and also feel within us, arise as a result of how the academic system is organized, produced, and sustained across time, place, and space. Press, 2003); Alison Mountz, “Women on the Edge: Workplace Stress at Universities in North America,” The Canadian Geographer 60, no. 2 (2016): 205–18. 3. We experienced this fellowship as a valuable opportunity. But we also recognized that our access to it was mediated by social, economic, or other obligations. As countries in the global north continue to tighten their national border regimes, marginalized academics, especially those from the global South, were less likely to succeed in getting a Swiss visa or securing relevant temporal and economic resources. 132 Bisaillon et al. The promise here, we posit... (shrink)

Resumen: Esta exposición intenta comprender las formas culturales de comunicación y fijación mnémica en una narración específica que Davi Kopenawa, chamán Yanomami, expone al antropólogo Bruce Albert, en virtud de los modos de existencia amazónicos, refiriéndose en particular a la intensidad de los espíritus selváticos y a la experiencia chamánica con los mundos espirituales. En el contexto de una extensión vegetal dispersa y sobresaliente, afirmamos una sociabilidad cotidiana en el marco de una “ética respetuosa o amorosa” entre todas las formas (...) de vida, expresada estéticamente en formas significantes y transportadoras de emociones desarrolladas por la cosmología amazónica. Para ello utilizamos las nociones que Aby Warburg emplea en su estudio de la cultura de las imágenes, en tanto curso por el que estas pueden entenderse como organismos vivientes susceptibles a transformación, preservando su propia biología en la trasmisión codificada de la memoria.: This exhibition tries to understand the cultural forms of communication and mnemic fixation in a specific narrative that Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami shaman, exposes to the anthropologist Bruce Albert, by virtue of Amazonian modes of existence, especially referring to the intensity of jungle spirits and experience Shamanic with spiritual worlds. In the context of a dispersed and outstanding plant extension, we affirm a daily sociability within the framework of a “respectful or loving ethic” among all life forms, aesthetically expressed in significant and transporting forms of emotions developed by Amazonian cosmology. For this we use the notions that Aby Warburg uses in his study of the culture of images, as a course by which they can be understood as living organisms susceptible to transformation, preserving their own biology in the coded transmission of memory. (shrink)

Este artículo contribuye a aclarar el concepto leibniziano de _razón_ a partir del análisis de su proyecto de fundación de una sociedad o academia de las ciencias en Alemania. Los escritos de Leibniz sobre esta temática nos muestran un plan teórico y práctico puesto conscientemente al servicio de la conformación y constitución racional de lo real, mediante la institución de un organismo para el bienestar general y el progreso técnico en beneficio de la sociedad. En la particular concepción ilustrada (...) que subyace a su proyecto de fundación de academias Leibniz pone en juego elementos fundamentales de su pensamiento, como la defensa de que la racionalidad sólo es posible para el ser humano en tanto que el individuo y las comunidades participan de los principios universales de la racionalidad desde una determinada perspectiva. (shrink)

In the study of gender and society, science is a strategic analytic research site—because of the hierarchical nature of gendered relations, generally, and the hierarchy of science, particularly. Academic science, especially, is crucial to, and revealing of, status in science and society. This article focuses on three questions: What is the status of women in scientific careers and the role of graduate education in these careers? What are the implications for the analysis of gender? Where can we intervene, and how? (...) In addressing these questions, the arguments concentrate on the social and organizational context of science and its relationship to gender and status. (shrink)

As gravuras impressas no periódico setecentista Academia dos Humildes e Ignorantes são, neste estudo, fonte para procurar saber quem eram os seus impressores, quantas edições se podem localizar desta obra e qual era o acolhimento por parte do público. As gravuras, sendo um elemento informativo que passa normalmente despercebido, permitem conhecer melhor o próprio periódico onde são publicadas e, assim, perceber o modo como se afirma esse género novo que era o das publicações periódicas de conteúdo cultural e informativo (...) e o papel que estas publicações têm no desenvolvimento da tipografia em Portugal no século XVIII. (shrink)

The growing commercialization of research with its effect on the ethical conduct of researchers, and the advancement of scientific knowledge with its effect on the welfare or otherwise of patients, are areas of pressing concern today and need a serious, thorough study. Biomedical research, and its forward march, is becoming increasingly dependent on industry-academia proximity, both commercial and geographic. A realization of the commercial value of academic biomedical research coupled with its rapid and efficient utilization by industry is the (...) major propelling force here. A number of well-intentioned writers in the field look to the whole development with optimism. But this partnership is a double-edged sword, for it carries with it the potential of an exciting future as much as the prospect of misappropriation and malevolence. Moreover, such partnerships have sometimes eroded public trust in the research enterprise itself. Connected to the growing clout of industry in institutions is concern about the commercialization of research and resolving the 'patient or product' loyalty. There is ambivalence about industry funding and influence in academia, and a consequent 'approach-avoidance' conflict. If academia has to provide the patients and research talent, industry necessarily has to provide the finances and other facilities based on it. This is an invariable and essential agreement between the two parties that they can walk out of only at their own peril. The profound ethical concerns that industry funded research has brought center-stage need a close look, especially as they impact patients, research subjects, public trust, marketability of products, and research and professional credibility. How can the intermediate goal of industry serve the purpose of the final goal of academia is the basic struggle for conscientious research institutions /associations. And how best the goal of maximizing profits can be best served, albeit suitably camouflaged as patient welfare throughout, is the concern of the pharmaceutical industry. A very great potential conflict of interest lies in the fact that academia needs the sophisticated instruments that only big funding can provide, while at the same time resists the attempts of the fund provider to set the agenda of research, protocol, design, publication, the works. Conflicts arise at many steps and levels of functioning, and are related to the expectations, competing interests, and conflicting priorities of the different entities involved, whether they are the academic medical centers, the funding agencies, the patients and their families, or the investors and venture capitalists. The public expects access to new treatments. Its appetite for innovation has been bolstered by the constant attention given by the press to new treatments and by the implicit promise from researchers of continuing advances. Similarly, patients demand privacy and control over information about themselves. It makes greater sense for genuine researchers to associate with large long-term industry players who have a track record of genuine hard-core discoveries, even if the process is slow , and the funding less . The element of control venture capitalists exert over the pharmaceutical industry is an under researched area for obvious reasons. But it needs further probing, for that will lay bare the pulls and pressures under which industry works. It makes sense for ethically minded researchers and institutions not to fall in the trap of stocks and equity investments in industry, howsoever attractive they appear, and get rid of them as soon as possible if they have them. If at all they want, it makes more sense to own stocks of larger well established concerns, for the stock upheavals being less, the pressure of the market-place, and of venture sharks, is likely to be lower too. While active participation by the researcher in the commercialization process may be greatly desired by industry, ostensibly in the name of creating value, academia must realize it is a bait it might find hard to swallow in the long run. It makes more sense for the researcher and institution to forego such temptations and/or walk out of such investments as soon as possible. While mainstream medicine and research are booming, as is connected industry, concerns about professional commitment to patient welfare are growing too. Increasing corporate influence is challenging certain long held and fundamental values of patient care, which will have far reaching implications for biomedical care and the future progress of mainstream medicine. (shrink)

The analytical tension between legal norms, moral values, and national interests seems no uncharted territory in political science, but has found very little interest in legal academia. For lawyers, moral values and national interests are largely “unknowns,” dealt with by other disciplines. Looking a bit deeper, the picture becomes more nuanced, however. As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay argues that norms, values, and interests are not different universes of legal (...) normativity, morality, and specific interests, but are interrelated concepts. Values clearly influence norms and often underpin them, while seemingly concrete norms (rules) are themselves often fragile constructs trying to balance competing interests. Value systems are quite diverse within societies, and this is even truer for interests; each society is a dynamic system of social interaction where conflicting interests are constantly playing out. In a way, underlying conflicts of values and interests are constantly being renegotiated in the legal system, with the norms enshrined in the text of statutes and treaties serving to constitute transitory reference points. (shrink)

Women Activating Agency in Academia seeks to create and expand safe spaces for scholarly, professional and personal stories and assemblages of agency. It provides readers with the opportunity to connect with the strategies women are using to navigate academe and the core values, linked to trust, relationship, wellbeing and ethics of care, they live by. The collection offers the stories of women academics from around the globe and across disciplines and showcases their efforts to meaningfully listen and converse in (...) order to resist self-audit and diminished identities. Reflections come from a range of responsive, personal and aesthetic techniques, including writing groups, guided autobiography, auto-ethnography, collective activism and slow scholarship. Chapters engage with themes and ideas such as agency, neoliberalism, ontological security, androcentricity, identity and collegial support, which manifest in unique ways for female academics. The focus in this volume is what really matters to women in the academy, as they share their efforts to 'be' themselves in their work, to 'care for themselves and others' and to 'count what isn't counted'. It aims to prove how collaborative storytelling and discussion can empower female academics to preserve and achieve these ambitions. (shrink)