Who Is Community Engagement For?: The Endless Loop of Democratic Transparency

Abstract

This article approaches college and university community engagement as a publicity practice responding to complex pressures in the U.S. higher education field. Democracy initiatives in American academia encompass a range of civic activities in communities near and far, but the forces driving their production are decidedly nonlocal and top-down. Good intentions are no longer enough for colleges and universities facing crises on a number of fronts. Today’s community collaborations must be intensive, reciprocal, deliberative, and appreciative. This mission of democratic transparency pursued by institutions involves extensive efforts to certify civic empowerment for public audiences and funders, trade and professional associations, state legislatures, and federal regulators. A promotional perspective on community engagement in higher education shifts attention from the authentic grassroots transformations that are its putative focus to the larger processes driving this activity and its outcomes: not least, the pursuit of legitimacy through increasingly elaborate self-assessment strategies. This endless loop—and its demands that engagement be ever more democratic and transparent, in its practice and in its evaluation—demonstrates not only the reach of promotional transparency, but its characteristic shape and reflexive organizational routines.