Activating and Enabling Academia in an Era of Colliding Crises - Vol. II

Our previous research topic Activating Academia for an Era of Colliding Crises achieved considerable success and helped to foster conversations crucial to our current predicament. We now seek to further develop those conversations within our augmented research topic.Volume 1 acknowledged that there has been discussion for decades about the need to rethink the core purpose of academia to enable all to live well on a planet of finite resources. Humanity's present predicaments point to a paradox at the heart of the academic enterprise. Although academic institutions have originated research and innovations that underpin much of what we view as ‘development and progress’, these same advances are also responsible for the global crises we now face. Indeed, many voices are now arguing that academia can and must do more to drive the transformative change that is needed if we are to avert the imminent catastrophe that is almost upon us. At the same time, academic institutions are increasingly experiencing threats to their very survival.Volume 2 aims to explore in further depth disruptions and pressures that impact academia itself, and risk further compromising the potential for academia to be at the vanguard of change. Challenges come from, amongst other things, humanity’s collective failure thus far to manage the threats and opportunities posed by AI, from the adoption or imposition of insidious business models prioritizing profit over people, from the dangerous anti-science movement, and from reactionary efforts to stifle universities as sites of critical thinking and dissent.Volume 2 of our Research Topic remains centered on the responsibility of academia - with its trusted educators, communicators, policy-influencers and researchers, to guide students and society through a transition to a better future. For some, this might mean embracing advocacy and activism as their moral responsibility at this point in humanity’s history, for others teaching new curricula, and for others doing new research.Decades of research have shown that evidence-based recommendations alone do not necessarily translate into policy or institutional change. Academics have referred to a broken ‘science-society’ contract, suggesting that calls to ‘listen to the science’ and expectations that warnings issued by scientists will be heeded reflect a depoliticized view of the relationships between science and society. This failure to recognize the intricate ways in which science and policy are connected raises questions about the neutrality of research and the academic enterprise. Our Research Topic invites articles that explore how we might re-make the science-society contract in an era where science is quite literally under siege.Questions about the independence and interdependence of research and teaching inevitably arise when academic institutions are in receipt of funds from corporations, charities, foundations and individuals. Institutions can be compromised by vested interests, often in the form of corporate interests that can influence research, curriculum, and staff appointments, and the will of senior management to address this problem is poor.Increasing numbers of academics recognize that we are not set up to ready society for an era of colliding environmental and social crises. Many fear that academia is guilty of perpetuating the problems that have created this crisis. And while growing numbers hold this view, answers as to what academics and academic institutions can do are not always palatable. Some academics have chosen to step outside of their conventional roles, embracing advocacy and activism, either taking individual action outside of their role or seeking to drive change within their institutions.To further facilitate conversations that help to provide answers to the questions of what it is that academics can do to drive transformational change, this Research Topic again brings together voices from diverse disciplines and nations. Their voices have in common one thing - each has reflected on or re-imagined their role and purpose as an academic and each has endorsed or embraced advocacy or activism in at least some form.While articles will be primarily organized around three new broad themes, we will consider submissions that extend conversations started around the original three themes (which are repeated below the new themes). The new themes are:(i) New generations of AI based on Large Language Models are producing rapid change across society and nature. Within academia, the performance of chatbots is threatening the integrity of essay-based assessments, while also challenging key foundations of education - critical writing, coding, statistical analysis, systematic review and research design. Beyond academia, the potential for large-scale automation risks social disruption that could disproportionately affect young people seeking entry-level positions. At the same time, the unprecedented build out of the computer facilities being driven by the AI boom is generating risks to food and water security while driving greenhouse gas emissions higher. Questions include (i) How do we assess students?; (ii) How do we address potential inequalities that arise from students spending different amounts of money on tokens. We are at risk of wealthier students simply buying better outcomes; (iii) How do we reconcile academic progression requirements with requirements from graduate employers who are leaning heavily into AI and want AI literacy; (iv) To what extent are we teaching a subject, or are teaching prompt engineering within a subject?; and (v) How can we work with AI companies to produce safe and ethical AI for education? For example ensure watermarking in AI output for education? We also invite articles that consider the role of Universities as places to critically evaluate AI as well as places of research and teaching that are being affected by this emerging technology.ii) Teaching practices for socioecological transition. We invite articles exploring innovative approaches to teaching in the context of the climate and ecological crisis. What has been learned from universities that have introduced General Education requirements? How do curricula address the emotional dimensions of the crisis, and what research is evaluating these approaches? How are ecological overshoot, degrowth, social ecology, and related perspectives being taught? We also welcome work on courses that prepare students for practical and artisanal skills, as well as teaching practices that counter smartphone and laptop distraction, cultivate sustained attention, and help students learn to work together in groups.(iii) What role do universities—and academics themselves—play in enabling, normalizing, or resisting authoritarian and neofascistic politics: where neofascism in our time is a politics of exclusionary nationalism, doubling down on social hierarchy, attacks on minorities and political opponents, and the erosion of democratic institutions and freedoms? Universities present themselves as bastions of liberal democracy, academic freedom, and critical inquiry. Yet neoliberal governance, institutional self-preservation, donor and political pressures, career incentives, and cultures of professional caution constrain their willingness to recognize and resist authoritarianism and neofascism—or even make them participants in it. We invite contributions examining academic silence, disavowal and self-censorship; reluctance to name fascistic developments; restrictions on protest, speech, teaching, and academic freedom; and cases such as universities’ responses to the Gaza encampments.To recap, the original Research Topic invited articles that (i) consider the ways our academic institutions are either failing or succeeding in catalyzing the urgent and transformative changes needed to enable humanity to navigate a precarious future; (ii) examine institutions and academics at the vanguard of change, and (iii) explore how academia can better anticipate and evaluate disruptors so that change becomes an informed choice rather than a chaotic imposition. Topic editors: Alison Julia Katherine Green, Adam R Aron, James Dyke Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85834/activating-and-enabling-academia-in-an-era-of-colliding-crises---vol-ii