The Problem of The University's Social Responsibility

Abstract

In the era of planetary unsustainability, it is necessary to manage collective impacts. This is called social responsibility, which requires learning to visualize the organization from its environment in order to change its routines. This is a major educational challenge that, according to Dewey, constitutes the political challenge of democracy, as a community capable of managing its own social and environmental problems. University Social Responsibility (USR) is crucial for collective democratic success, but it is still embryonic, because powerful brakes prevent institutional change in the university: there is no external social pressure for the university to be socially responsible; and from within, the siloed design of specialties, the isolation of teachers and the alienated quality criteria hinder the institutional permeability of USR. The birth of the USR is therefore inscribed not only within the secular debate on the social role of the university. It is also situated within the more general debate on the behavior that any organization (public or private, profit or non-profit) must adopt in order to face the global risk of planetary unsustainability of humanity, as planetary unsustainability calls for an international and trans-institutional macro-ethics. USR is also a theory of education that is strongly bound to the organizations themselves.