Roger Mourad

This book is about the significance of postmodern critique for what it means to engage in a scholarly inquiry. The philosophers whose work I explore for this purpose are Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and Calvin Schrag. Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge is widely regarded as the most illuminating exposition of postmodern philosophy. Foucault and Derrida are the most influential French postmodern philosophers, and French thought is the most widely influential source of postmodern themes. Rorty is a philosopher of the Anglo-American analytic tradition, who developed a postmodern position on knowledge that signaled his break from that tradition and established him as a leading American postmodern philosopher. He couples his postmodernism with an effort to revive classical American pragmatism, especially the ideas of John Dewey. In contrast, Schrag is an American philosopher who adopts major French postmodern positions and attempts to reconcile them with aspects of modern Continental European philosophy.

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 multidisciplinary
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.

This paper explores the idea of a formalized “critical space” in higher education, using elements of Habermas’s theory of communicative action and ideas from Barnett, Englund, and Marginson. Inquiry in this hypothetical space would use knowledge generated in existing domains to engage in dialogue, debate, and development of proposals and programs for social change, with the ultimate objective of engagement in the public sphere.

Key ideas in the work of Michel Foucault are explored and
applied to the organized pursuit of knowledge in higher education. His
association of power and knowledge accounts for deeply rooted practices in higher education that would need to be mediated or overcome for there to be a revolution in inquiry to occur, such as the one advanced by Nicholas Maxwell. Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power and bio-power, and how they act to manage the behavior of free citizens, are described. These concepts are then applied to free inquiry, to show how the activity of individual inquirers is managed and how critical inquiry is controlled. The management of inquiry involving four norms, two of them intrinsic to inquiry and the other two extrinsic, is explained. The potential of Foucault’s concept of discursive formations is introduced as a means of reconceiving inquiry to overcome these impediments to a revolution in inquiry.

Given that human suffering persists globally on a massive scale, are scholars doing all they ought to be in the pursuit of knowledge? To explore this question, the author analyzes works by Alasdair MacIntyre, Nicholas Maxwell, and Bill Readings. Based on implications derived from their moral critiques of higher education, an alternative, broadened conception of inquiry is proposed that would include explicit consideration and development of values based on dialogue and debate.

Recent empirical research has raised serious questions about the validity of placement tests and the necessity of mandatory placement in developmental courses. This study demonstrates the use of propensity score matching to compare two groups of new students who tested below college level Reading: those who took a developmental Reading course and college level courses in their first semester, and those who took only college level courses. It was found that enrollment in developmental Reading was not a significant predictor of success in college level courses when controlling for other variables. African Americans, males, young students who did not receive Pell grants, and older students who received Pell grants were significantly less likely to succeed in college level courses without concurrently enrolling in developmental Reading. These results support the need for more research on the disparate effects of developmental placement policy on demographic subgroups.

Use of the community college as preparation for transfer to 4-year institutions and bachelor degree attainment continues to be a critical means of access to higher learning for students from diverse backgrounds. What variables distinguish community college transfers to 4-year institutions who earn a bachelor degree from transfers who do not earn the degree? Logistic regression is applied to model bachelor degree attainment of students new to a community college in Fall 2000 who transferred to 4-year institutions at some point during the following 8 academic years. Fewer semesters enrolled, more credits earned, and higher GPA at the community college were positively associated with bachelor degree attainment, while enrollment in a developmental course was negatively associated with bachelor degree attainment. Gender, ethnicity, experience at a 4-year institution prior to enrolling at the community college and classification of 4-year institution were also significant predictors. Implications of these findings are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of a new form of right that is both antidisciplinarian and liberated from “sovereignty,” the term Michel Foucault uses for what he claims to be the traditional theme of modern political philosophy.  Some attempts to derive a theory of right from Foucault’s critique have been made.  However, by their own admission they do not yield a coherent and adequate theory, and other work has demonstrated the major problems inherent in Foucault’s critique that render such a project problematic.  This paper takes a different approach by revising the philosophical foundations of modern democracy with the goal of developing a new theory of right that addresses the problems that Foucault identified. 

To provide a theoretical context for this exploration, Foucault’s key concepts of disciplinary technologies, power, the construction and maintenance of human subjects, and the role of the human body in human subjection are briefly reviewed.  The main analysis will focus on the ideas of three political theorists whose respective works represent the core of  “sovereignty,” and who are indisputably basic to any student of Western political theory, namely Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.  The aim of this analysis is not to provide another critique of their virtues and shortcomings.  Instead, the work of these thinkers is used in a pragmatic way, to elicit a new form of right that could serve as a counter to disciplinary power.

It is commonly believed that mass public education is fundamentally concerned with the advancement of Western civilization and national strength through the dissemination of knowledge and skills.  The ways that we think about and conduct educational practices are also related in no small way to basic rights such as individual freedom.  Individual rights in the West are themselves grounded in beliefs about human nature, rationality, and behavior.  This philosophical work identifies and critiques these beliefs as they were developed and established during the formative period of individual rights.  It explores how these beliefs are embedded in educational practices, using some of Michel Foucault's ideas to provide a contemporary critical context.  An alternative interpretation of these foundations is offered that challenges basic ideas about the purposes of education.  A direction is provided for further work.

In Visions of Schooling: Conscience, Community, and Common Education, Rosemary Salomone, a professor of law at St. John's University, explores the question of values in public school curricula and "school choice." The narrow context is an account of the legal history ...