Deliberative Democracy in Higher Education: The Role of Critical Spaces Across Universities

Abstract

The capacity of democracies to serve as venues for the free expression of ideas and opinions has become threatened by discourse and debate in the global media that is ill-informed and unjustified while human suffering and inequities continue to plague the planet.  This situation calls for scholars and universities to take greater initiative on behalf of the social good beyond the ivory tower.  To this end, the application of deliberative democracy as a method for critical spaces in and across universities is explored.  Such spaces would harness the potential of scholarship for social change by explicitly considering both multi-disciplinary knowledge and values to address global problems and counter neoliberal trends in higher education and societies generally.A theoretical model for scholarly deliberation in critical spaces is elaborated in four stages, culminating in the advancement of proposals for social change to the public sphere.